Milwaukee gas giveaway sparks crashes, arrests
Jul 12th, 2006 | by Neil Barton | Posted in weird news | Comments Off
MILWAUKEE — Two vehicles crashed, four people were arrested for fighting and three officers got sent to the hospital — all over some free gasoline Wednesday.
For the most part, hundreds of drivers waited patiently for hours for about $30 worth of free gasoline from Allstate Insurance.
Some cars started lining up before midnight for the gas, and the line stretched into a residential area, trapping some residents in their driveways Wednesday morning, said Anne E. Schwartz, Milwaukee Police Department spokeswoman.
That led to fights and arrests for disorderly conduct — in one case, three officers got blood on them from a bloody nose, Schwartz said. They went to the hospital as a precaution.
The two crashes apparently occurred when some queued-up motorists tried to let friends into line, Schwartz said.
“Any time you offer free gas when it is $3 a gallon, it is not surprising people would get excited,” she said.
Allstate Insurance gave away the semi-tanker truck of gasoline as a reward to Milwaukee for topping its annual “best drivers” list of safest cities with populations between 500,000 and a million people.
Local insurance agents started pumping the gas at a Milwaukee service station at 6 a.m.
Clarence Jefferson said he thought he’d be first in line when he got there at 4 a.m., only to find hundreds of others already ahead of him.
