This document is part of a series about Randall "Duke" Cunningham's attempted murder / suicide on November 25th, 2005

Home page for "Cunningham's Last Battle" web site / Contact the author / victim / witness Russell 'Ace' Hoffman

Re: The Same Training

July 4th, 2006

Mr Jenkins,

I think truth is patriotic.  So, assuming my eyes did not deceive me and I am not deceiving you, here's some facts:

The same training he used to kill five people and was trying to use to make it eight...

The same training we spent millions of dollars to give him...

The same training he flew over 300 missions perfecting...

The same training we elected him to Congress for using so well...

The same training that made him an Ace and not a corpse like his five previous opponents...

That is what Randall Cunningham used to try to kill my lovely wife Sharon and I, about 8:35 pm, November 25th, 2005, on Mission Road in San Marcos.  So say I.

You have suggested a wide variety of things that some slanderers and libelers might say about this event.  You accuse me of not knowing who I saw that night just because it happened in literally the blink of an eye.

But I wasn't blinking.

I NEEDED to know what he looked like, not only for possible identification to the police later, which was hardly forefront on my mind as I was at the time only just barely hoping against hope to live long enough to tell them about it, but rather, I HAD to see his face because I needed to know what he was going to do next.

What if my car was undrivable, which, as it turned out, in large part, it was?  After he hit us, I rolled quite a ways for several reasons:

1) To get away from the crazed driver who had just tried with his BEST effort (see above) to kill us.

2) To not show ANY aggression towards the other driver after the "accident."  Even immediate braking after the collision would have been a psychological clue to his obviously-troubled mind about my own mental state and would probably have been perceived as an aggressive act.  IF he had in fact completely focused all his anger/attention on ME, an obviously-random victim, I didn't want to be anywhere near him.  Was he still mad at the world, or at whatever or whoever made him first try to flip his car and then try to ram it into mine at as high a closing speed as possible -- enough to kill everyone?  Give him a few score feet to count to ten as he walks over -- calm down a little.

3) I could see there were a number of witnesses (five? six?) up ahead so I let the car roll to where I was abaft them.  There is great safety in numbers.

4) I did not want to put any sudden mechanical stresses on my car in case I needed it to flee from the other, crazed, driver, whether he was on foot or in his car.

5) If the assailant got out of his car and came towards me, it would give me time to assess whether he was coming at me angry and still ready to kill us (as he had just tried his LIVING BEST to do) or was he calmly coming over to apologize and explain?  If he reaches for something, will he come up with his license, or a baseball bat or a gun?  I could (hopefully) pull away if I didn't like what I saw.  At this point I didn't realize, of course, that San Marcos has no police coverage (or at least didn't that night), but for the first few minutes, I would be on my own anyway, and I don't carry a gun OR a baseball bat in my car.  It would have given me time to think of what weapons I DO carry if it turned out I could not move the car and he was coming over aggressively (there's usually a 70-function Swiss Army Knife in the glove compartment, for example.  I could poke him with a cork screw or maybe file his nails if I pull the wrong tool.).

6)  If he came out or his car with a gun (as sometimes happens after traffic accidents), he would have farther to shoot so his aim could not possibly be as good as if I were closer.

Now, I realize, Mr. Jenkins, that you will not believe I could have thought about every one of those things in an instant he flashed by us and connected with the rear end of my car.   But I did (all except the cork screw).  I had to -- my life might have depended on any one of these thoughts and I didn't (and don't) know which one.

Every one of them flashed through my mind; and in fact, I am only recalling them now because of a comment by the cop -- the one who showed up last Friday and started a formal investigation, and will presumably be talking to witnesses and so forth.

Yes, we have a "real" investigation going now, with a tracking number and everything.  So you're probably not allowed to print anything now, anyway, and I hardly need you to help put pressure on Horn's office or anyone else, thank you very much (in advance or in absentia, whatever).  I have told the investigating officer (who seems like a real decent fellow, and very professional) who I believe the assailant was and when I realized it, and I have told him I am not interested in punishing Mr. Cunningham in any way for his actions, because "I just can't IMAGINE the stress he must have been under that day."   But people such as the psychiatrist who bought his bogus agreement not to "act on his ideation (not to try to kill himself, let alone use my wife and I as hapless victims of that attempt) need to know that their "agreement" wasn't worth spit, and other such "agreements" being made by other psychiatrists across the country all need to be questioned.

How many people will die if everyone ignores what happened and doesn't study its ramifications?  How many lives -- especially police lives, who probably face suicidal drivers nearly every day somewhere in the country -- might be saved if we can show them that THIS technique is so effective, it can even beat an Ace?  Take the "fight" right out of him.  The best in the world tried his best, at what he does best, to best me, but my recent reading of the California Driver's Manual saved us.  Goodness, but that book is GOOD!

This news will surely break sooner or later, and then your paper will probably confine itself to "dutifully" printing pro-nukers' and right-wingers' baseless allegations that my claims are somehow politically motivated, while you yourself have already accused me of being blinded by conspiracy theories.

But who needs a conspiracy theory?  My wife's and my attempted murderer, whoever he may be, goes free for any old reason that happened to please the SMSD that night, whether they had to rip up the entire U.S. Constitution to do it, or just a good piece.

God Bless America.

Ace