Robbie Thomas
OJ Simpson Chase: 30th Anniversary
I think everybody and their mothers who are 35 years old or older know the OJ Simpson Chase and the Trail of the Century. This is a blog post about where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the chase and went on to see it. Here goes.
The chase started around 5-ish in Los Angeles and 8-ish at Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. The sun was still out. My pal-slash-neighbor Jan and I rode bikes around town and got to the small downtown area of Grosse Pointe Park. Somebody told us that OJ Simpson is being chased on national TV. I can’t remember if it was a fellow friend or someone in town who told us about it. We were close to our house, I lived in a flat at the time, I lived downstairs, and Jan lived upstairs. We pedaled our asses off and he was stronger and had more endurance than me. I remember him yapping at me to pedal faster.
My late Uncle Chris was friends with Jan’s mom and he happened to be there. I, Chris, and Jan sat there watching it on TV. I couldn’t remember which network we were watching. Jan’s mom was watching it in her room. We were asking questions about what was going on. As time progressed, Jan would be more furious with the cameraman. Jan would swear quite a lot when the helicopter’s cameraman would have issues when keeping the camera on the Branco below.
Eventually, OJ made it to his house. If I recall correctly, my Uncle Chris left after that. Me and Jan watched for five minutes while OJ sat in his Bronco. I don’t recall if we were aware if OJ was driving or not. But as everyone knows, he sat in there for quite a while. Me and Jan got bored, but Jan’s mom was intrigued, so she watched while we went on to fire up the Sega Genesis and played Mutant League Hockey.
And a little later, Jan’s mom hollers from the room, telling us that OJ surrendered. I can’t remember if we went to her room, or just paused the game to take a look for ourselves. I do recall that 20 minutes after OJ surrendered, they were talking about the different codes police officers use in this kind of situation. And Jan’s mom said, “Code X, and you’re dead.” I don’t recall what X was.
Now we fast forward to 2024, just a month before OJ Simpson’s passing, I watched some of the 1994 news coverage of the OJ Simpson Chase. They had videos available for the full CNN coverage. Surely, it wasn’t uploaded by someone affiliated with CNN, just somebody. But that was interesting to watch, the police conference before the chase. And now, I look on YouTube and that video does not seem to be available, for me at least. So, I found something else besides YouTube. On Archive.org, there is news coverage from ABC, take a look.