“On Sunday, Sept. 28, the cops came looking to potentially arrest me,” said PCM Varsity Football Coach and Athletic Director Greg Bonnett.
Bonnett’s truck was reported to be stolen and used to steal groceries at Walmart in Knoxville. But was it him?
Bonnett said, “Carrie, my wife, she says, ‘Do you have any idea why there’s two Jasper County sheriffs in our driveway?’ And I say, ‘What?’ And I’m watching the Bears game, and I go out there to meet them. And right as soon as I step off the porch, both of them kinda back up like they are very suspicious of me or something. They’re like, ‘Are you Greg Bonnett?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, sir.’ And they are like, ‘Is there a Ford F-150 registered in your name?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, there is, it’s at the shop getting fixed.’ And they kinda look at each other like I’m trying to pull one over on them. And one of them said he’ll go check out my story, so he drives up to the shop to see if it’s still there, while the other guy, like, stays down at the end of the street to make sure I don’t make a run for it. And so then they come back and they’re like, ‘It’s not there. Do you mind opening your garage door?’ And so I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ll open my garage door, but I need to put away my wiener dog first, because my wiener dog will bite you,’ and I don’t want that liability, because I have this really mean wiener dog, Master Wiener. I mean, he’ll seriously bite you. He’s, like, blind and old. And so, like, I pop my garage door, and I let them see in there, and they saw that my truck wasn’t there, and that’s when they really started lightening up and figuring out that it wasn’t me stealing groceries from Walmart. And so the cop starts filling out the report. And I’m sitting out there, and my son Bodhi is looking out the window. And Bodhi is kind of afraid of cops for some reason because they got guns, ya know. So he’s lookin’ out the front window and I’m like, ‘It’s okay, Bodhi, you can come out. Cops are friendly.’ And all throughout the interview Bodhi is sitting there saying, ‘Is that a real gun?’ And the cop’s like, ‘Yes, it is.’ And Bodhi is like, ‘You shoot bad guys with that, right?’ And the guy is like, ‘I hope not.’ And Bodhi is like, ‘Are you gonna shoot the guy who stole my dad’s truck?’ And he’s like, ‘We hope not.’ And they are being really nice to him and gave him a little badge and stuff like that. And they were really good guys to work with after they figured out that I was indeed not the culprit.”
Everything in Bonnett’s truck was thrown out on a gravel road, including a wooden Jesus. The criminal left him Wranglers and a pocket knife in return, but unfortunately, Bonnett had no intention of keeping them. The truck was discovered at the cemetery in Colfax with a missing window. Where that window has gone will be asked about for hundreds of years. Songs will be sung and theories will overwhelm the world.
Bonnett’s advice for not getting your vehicle involved in a Grand Theft Auto: “Just don’t have such an awesome-looking car like my truck with sweet stickers on it, and it won’t get stolen, and make sure you lock your cars up around here.”