The Reluctant Hero
STEVE MITCHELL
COPY EDITOR
Kentucky truck driver Ron Lantz was looking forward to his retirement this month after 35 years on the road.
The way Ron figured it, he'd probably get a nice cake, maybe a handshake from his supervisors at Bass Transportation. No big deal. Then he and Ruth, his wife of 43 years, would be off to their winter home in Florida for a quiet celebration of their own.
That was the thinking before Lantz pulled his purple Kenworth T800 double sleeper into a remote Maryland rest stop shortly before 1 a.m. on Oct. 24. There, parked under bright lights was a blue Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey plates and two suspects wanted in the Washington sniper case. Recalling a description of the car just hours before, Lantz called 911. He maneuvered his 18-wheeler to block the exit ramp and waited for police.
Hours later, his face appeared in newspapers and on television screens around the world, his silver hair disheveled, wearing a plaid shirt and a perplexed smile.
"We got 700 or 800 calls to the house," Lantz recalled.
Never mind that the phone number is unlisted.
"Our local TV station said President Bush tried to call us but he couldn't get through," said Ruth Lantz. "He said he'd call again, but the phone was pretty busy that day. I don't know if he tried to call back or not."
Overnight, the Lantz family was in the spotlight. The nation handed the 61-year-old truck driver the hero title, and he was quick to reject it.
"I'm no hero," he proclaimed again and again. "I just did what I thought I was supposed to do."
What he was supposed to do, and what he did, became a top news story for a week following that post-midnight detour at a Maryland rest stop.
Lantz drives a regular route between Monroe, Ohio, and Wilmington, Del. He said he left Wilmington on the return run at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 23. The veteran trucker has been driving the same route twice a week for the past four years. Lantz said he frequently pulls into a remote rest stop along Interstate 70 to use the restroom. It's the only one between Baltimore and Hagerstown, Md.
Early Thursday morning, he pulled into the familiar rest area and immediately spotted the blue Chevrolet, parked in plain sight, under bright lights.
"I recognized the car from the description that had been broadcast that night over the radio," he said. "I called 911 and told them that I thought there might be somebody up here at the rest stop that they'd be interested in."
He said the dispatcher asked Lantz and a second truck driver to pull their rigs around and block the exit to the rest area.
"They couldn't get out. We had them blocked in," Lantz said.
About 15 minutes later, Lantz said, the place was crawling with police. "I didn't see them pull the two men out of the car, but I saw a lot of guns." Local police and federal officers descended on the area, taking John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, into custody.
Officers briefly questioned the long-haul driver, took down his commercial license number and sent him on his way.
Pretty exciting stuff.
But Lantz said an event that took place eight days earlier — and less than 25 miles away from the Myersville rest area where the arrests took place — will always stand out in his mind.
"It was about a week before the arrests and a lot of us [truckers] were talking on our radios about the sniper case," Lantz recalled. "We were on [Interstate] 70, near the weight scales on the other side of Frederick [Maryland.] We knew the sniper was probably driving the same roads that we were."
Lantz, who is director of the men's ministry at the Central Church of the Nazarene near his home — and a Sunday school teacher — said he "got on the radio and asked if anybody wanted to get together behind the scales for a prayer meeting."
About 50 truckers pulled in, along with some four-wheelers, meeting at the scales just before dark on a Tuesday.
"The scales were closed, so we just gathered and said a few things. We talked and prayed about our country, and we prayed for the families of those killed by the snipers."
The irony of the prayer meeting — and his subsequent part in the capture of the sniper suspects — does not escape Lantz.
"You don't think the Lord works in mysterious ways?" he asked.
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