A newspaper delivery driver tried to stop a tow truck dragging away his van. It didn’t end well.
One minute Josef Bieniek is delivering a stack of Shepherd Express newspapers to a liquor store on Milwaukee’s northwest side, and the next he’s chasing down a tow truck dragging away his van.
He asks a passing driver if he can jump in her car for the pursuit and, amazingly, she says, OK sure, even though she has a child in the back seat.
When Bieniek catches up to the tow truck on 76th Street north of Mill Road, he jumps from the car and confronts the truck driver, shouting about working for the Shepherd, and holding on to the driver’s side window.
The driver, fearing for his safety, begins to drive off with Bieniek hanging onto the truck and then falling into the street.
A perfectly normal Wednesday for 70-year-old Bieniek suddenly had turned ugly. He wound up at Froedtert Hospital where I found him still occupying a bed on Monday, five days after the ordeal.
He showed me the nasty road rash on his arms and legs and head, and he grimaced in pain from any movement at all. But it looks like he picked the right book to read while he heals: “How To Stay Human In A (Expletive)-Up World.”
“This is new territory. I’ve got to get well. I was not prepared for this,” he said.
Bieniek feels that he was treated unfairly. But the towing company, Brew City Towing, sees him as the instigator. So does DPA Security, which serves the Mill Road Shopping Center where all this began. We could use Judge Judy on this one.
Bieniek didn’t mention to me that he parked his van in the fire lane directly in front of Jimmy’s Liquor, 6412 N. 76th St. That’s why he was towed, even though he was in the store no more than a minute or two.
Clearly, the tow truck driver was waiting to pounce, and he lifted Bieniek’s Dodge Caravan in less than a minute. Brew City tells me they
typically don’t tow vehicles used in quick deliveries like this, but apparently the driver didn’t know.
The fire lane is a favorite spot to park for anyone stealing from the strip mall’s stores. It offers the quickest getaway, said Christopher Davis, owner of DPA Security.
Bieniek came out to find his van rolling away behind the tow truck. He ran after it and then got the helpful woman to let him jump in her car for the chase. He didn’t get her name, but he told me to pass along his gratitude to her.
No one who described the ensuing confrontation to me was under oath, but here’s what they said. Bieniek said he held on to the tow truck and tried to explain about his Shepherd delivery job. His cell phone and wallet were in the van and he desperately wanted it back.
Brew City Towing manager Jeremy (he wouldn’t give me his last name) said Bieniek grabbed and scratched the driver’s arm, beat on the window and tried to get in the truck. The driver worried this bellowing man might have a weapon.
“Put it this way, if the driver feels threatened for his life and he’s trying to get away and this guy is grabbing on to the vehicle, I mean what does he think is going to happen?” Jeremy said.
Milwaukee police talked to the driver but took no action in this case, Jeremy said. A police spokeswoman said she could find no reports on the incident.
Bieniek was able to communicate enough of his message about his delivery job that the tow truck driver decided to unhook the van and leave it parked at 74th and Acacia streets, just north of the strip mall, rather than take it to the private tow lot at 4030 W. Douglas Ave.
With Bieniek in the hospital, two friends went to get the van and take it to the Riverwest neighborhood, where he lives. The drama continued there when someone entered the van and tampered with the ignition but not did steal it. At the request of District 5 police, the city on Sunday took the van to its tow lot on Lincoln Avenue for safekeeping.
Bieniek is in no shape to go bail it out. He was fortunate just to find someone to care for his three cats while he mends in the hospital and then goes to rehab.
He brightened when a monarch butterfly fluttered outside his hospital window. Better days ahead.