On August 28th, 2003, 46-year old Brian Wells did what he had done most mornings for the previous ten years – he went to his lunchtime shift as a pizza delivery man at Mama Mia’s Pizza in the Great Lakes city of Erie, Pennsylvania. The pizza joint was a small, unassuming place in a single story red brick shopping plaza on one of Erie’s main shopping strips; Peach Street. Hugging the edge of the carpark there is a law firm, a hair and nail salon, a dentist and a laundromat—typical local stores, the kind you drive past without knowing they’re really there. Cars pull in and out of the carpark every minute. The car that pulled out just after 1:30 pm that day was Brian’s, off to deliver his last pizzas for the shift. He pulled out in his old green Geo Metro hatchback and headed south down busy Peach Street. Three and a half miles down the road, Brian turned left down a dirt access road, arriving at a quiet wooded area by the transmission tower for the local tv station. He slowly pulled to the side of the road and turned off his ignition, stepping out of the car to deliver two small pizzas.
What occurred next, changed everything.
Suddenly, Brian was in a race against time.
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