Disabled Oregon woman on mobility scooter arrested after leading police on low-speed chase
BILL HUTCHINSON
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- A disabled Oregon woman on an electric mobility scooter was arrested after leading police on a low-speed chase for riding on a sidewalk without a helmet, despite the scooter being prescribed by her doctor as her only means of transportation.
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Disabled Oregon woman on mobility scooter arrested after leading police on low-speed chase originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
A disabled Oregon woman on an electric mobility scooter was arrested and charged with leading police on a low-speed chase after officers stopped her for riding the scooter on a sidewalk without a helmet, her lawyer told ABC News.
Jennifer Gayman of Brookings, Oregon, said she was driving home from a karaoke bar in November when police officers pulled her over and ticketed her even though she informed them that the scooter was prescribed by her doctor and that it was her only way of getting around, according to police bodycam footage of the incident released to ABC News on Wednesday by her lawyer.
“When I first heard about the case, I was very skeptical — that there’s got to be another side to this. But that is what really happened,” Gayman’s attorney, Jacob Johnstun, told ABC News.
Gayman has a genetic abnormality called Best’s disease, which has left her with macular degeneration in both eyes. She also suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, and peripheral neuropathy.
“I don’t know why this is happening to me, especially when I’ve been riding around this scooter for two years in this town,” Gayman told ABC affiliate station KATU-TV in Portland, Oregon.
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Johnstun said the incident unfolded on the night of Nov. 18. “It’s important to note that she wasn’t drinking that night,” he told ABC News.
In the police bodycam video, at least two officers are seen stopping Gayman on the sidewalk in downtown Brookings.
“Do you understand? It’s my mobility scooter. It’s how I get around. I don’t have a car,” Gayman is heard telling the officers in the video.
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One of the officers responded, “It’s still an electronic scooter.”
Becoming agitated, Gayman told the officers, “You’re taking my disability act and you’re throwing it in the garbage.”
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One of the officers then pulled out his iPhone and Googled the Oregon Department of Transportation laws governing the use of electronic scooters.
“I’m legally blind; that’s why I have this,” Gayman told the officers. “I’ll let everybody know that you have bad laws in this town. These people ride these scooters for disabilities. You want them riding in the street so they can get hit by a car. You’re kidding me?”
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The officers wrote Gayman a ticket for unsafe operation of a motor assisted scooter on a sidewalk, operation of a motor assisted scooter in a crosswalk and failure to wear protective head gear.
“You’re not allowed to ride this thing without a helmet. You’re not allowed to ride it in a crosswalk. You are not allowed to ride it on sidewalks. It has to stay in the bike lane,” a police officer told Gayman. “Until you get a helmet you are not allowed to drive this thing.”
But once Gayman was handed her citation, she took off, riding her scooter on the sidewalk.
“You’re going to go to jail if you continue driving,” an officer told Gayman as she drove away.
Officers then chased Gayman with their lights and siren on and radioed for backup.
They pursued Gayman all the way to the garage of her home where they handcuffed her, read her Miranda Rights, searched her and placed her under arrest on suspicion of attempting to elude police, interfering with a peace officer and disorderly conduct.
ABC News reached out the Brookings Police Department for comment, but it did not respond.
Johnstun filed a claim against the city this week, a precursor to a lawsuit. He said he plans to file a lawsuit accusing the officers of violating Gayman’s rights under the Americans with Disability Act and discriminating against a disabled person.
He said Gayman continues to ride her mobility scooter around town.
“She still doesn’t have any other way of getting around,” Johnstun said.
He added that the incident has “been incredibly stressful and emotionally taxing” for Gayman.View comments
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Republican candidate challenges Tuberville residency, says he appears to live Florida, not Alabama
KIM CHANDLER
4 min read
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Election 2026 Alabama Governor
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FILE – U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., speaks about plans to run for the governor of Alabama in 2026, May 27, 2025 at Byron’s Smokehouse in Auburn, Ala. (AP Photo/ John David Mercer, File)
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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A Republican opponent is challenging U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s eligibility to run for governor of Alabama, accusing the football coach-turned-politician of not meeting the legal requirement to have lived in the state for seven years.
Ken McFeeters, who is running against Tuberville for the Republican nomination for governor, filed the challenge Tuesday with the Alabama Republican Party. McFeeters in a phone interview said he believes Tuberville lives in a multimillion-dollar beach home in Florida instead of a smaller home that he has listed as his residence in Auburn, Alabama.
Property tax records show the former Auburn University football coach has a home in Auburn, Alabama ,with an appraised value of $291,780 on which he claims a homestead exemption. He also has a beach home in Walton County, Florida with an estimated market value of $5.5 million, according to property records.
The Auburn house was initially purchased by Tuberville’s wife and son in 2017. The senator’s name was later added to the property, and the son’s name removed. Both the Auburn and Florida homes appear to have recently been put in a revocable trust with Tuberville’s wife as trustee.
“It’s belittling to the average person in Alabama for him to think we believe that he’s being sincere when he says he lives at his son’s $300,000 house when he’s got a $6 million beach house. Where would you live?” McFeeters said.
McFeeters wrote in his letter to party officials that the available records, “if accurate, strongly suggest that Auburn may have been used as an address of convenience rather than as a true domicile.” McFeeters said Tuberville’s travel records also show frequent travel to the Florida Panhandle, which he said buttresses the idea that he resides in the location.
Mallory Jaspers, a spokeswoman for Tuberville, called the challenge a “ridiculous PR stunt from a desperate candidate.”
“Senator Tuberville has proudly represented Alabama in the United States Senate for the past six years. This made-up narrative didn’t work when he was running for Senate in 2019, and it certainly isn’t going to work now,” Jaspers wrote in an email. Jaspers said the Auburn home remains the senator’s primary residence.
Tuberville faced similar accusations in his Senate campaign. Opponents called him “Florida man” or a “tourist in Alabama.” The Senate has a less stringent residency requirement before taking office.
Tuberville told The Associated Press earlier this month that he believes he meets the residency requirement.
“We checked it out. I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought it was a problem,” Tuberville said. Tuberville said it will be up to the Republican Party to decide any challenge, but “what I’ve heard from them, they feel good about it.”
Tuberville was the head football coach at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008. He then coached at Texas Tech and the University of Cincinnati. He went to work for ESPN after retiring from coaching. In a 2017 promotional video for ESPN, he talked about moving to Florida after retiring from coaching.
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Tuberville voted in Florida in 2018. He registered to vote in Alabama on March 28, 2019, about two weeks before announcing his run for Senate.
Jeannie Burniston, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Republican Party, said challenges are heard and decided by the party’s 21-member steering committee. Burniston said the committee will decide if there is enough evidence for a challenge to proceed to a hearing where both sides present evidence. Burniston said she cannot comment on challenges.
The awkwardly worded requirement in the Alabama Constitution says the governor and lieutenant governor “shall have been citizens of the United States ten years and resident citizens of this state at least seven years next before the date of their election.”
McFeeters said it is important that the Republican Party take the matter seriously. He said Tuberville should be asked to provide clear evidence that he has lived in Alabama for seven consecutive years.
Susan Pace Hamill, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, said the language of the residency requirement is vague. She said it could be interpreted to be seven consecutive years or it could be seven years broken up by periods living elsewhere. But she said Alabama’s culture and history supports the argument that it should be seven consecutive years.
“Alabama’s culture is suspicious of outsiders and historically most of Alabama’s governors were born and raised in the state, often having been descended from generations of Alabamians,” Hamill wrote in an email. Her comments were first reported by the Alabama Reflector.
Brookings woman awarded $300,000 in damages following 15 mph police chase
by KTVL StaffWed, March 30th 2022 at 11:53 AM
In this still image from a Brookings police officer body camera, Jennifer Gayman (right) is seen after police pulled her over because she was driving her scooter on the sidewalk.
BROOKINGS, Ore. — A former Brookings woman has been awarded $300,000 from the city after appealing a ruling that penalized her for riding her mobility scooter on the sidewalk at night without a helmet.
The law firm representing the woman, Johnstun Injury Law, said Jennifer Gayman’s civil lawsuit against the City of Brookings has ended in a reversal of Gayman’s felony conviction in June 2021. The city has agreed to pay Ms. Gayman $300,000 for damages, issue a public apology and require law enforcement to receive Americans with Disabilities Act training.
“It was very important to Ms. Gayman that ADA training be given,” said the law firm in a press release, “so that other disabled citizens in mobility scooters can feel safe driving around town without the fear of being cited or arrested for exercising their basic rights.”
The incident stems from an encounter with Brookings police officers on November 19, 2018 when Gayman was returning home on her mobility scooter and was approached by police. Gayman’s attorney noted that the officers gave her an “unlawful order to abandon her mobility scooter and walk the rest of the way home (over a mile) because she did not have a helmet.”
Gayman did not comply with the order and drove home instead. According to Steve Duin for Oregon Live, the officers followed Gayman in their vehicle, travelling 15 mph all the way to her house “in the most famous low-speed police chase in Oregon history.”
The officers arrested Gayman at her house and she was eventually convicted with one felony count of eluding a police officer. Gayman spent 5 days in jail.
