Teen went to buy gas and ended up a hostage

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ore. — Nicole Street went for a drive to get spark plugs and gasoline, and then she thought she was a goner.

Taken hostage Saturday by a shouting man at a gas station, the 16-year-old high-school sophomore figured, "I'm going to die."

But the man eventually was shot to death by a Linn County sheriff's sergeant, Dave Lawler, as Street crouched.

Street described her moments of danger in Monday's Albany Democrat-Herald.

She said she got her driver's license a month ago and was eager to drive her black Dodge Neon, so she went to a parts store to get plugs for the family motorcycles.

Then she stopped at the Chevron station to fill up her car.

There, Robert Earl Thompson, 51, of Brownsville, was yelling at an employee that he needed $10 worth of gas. His girlfriend, identified as Shirley Coulter, 50, got out of the car and fled into the station with two grandchildren.

Street said she pulled the Neon behind a vehicle on the inside pumps of the station and saw Thompson coming toward her with a shotgun.

"I thought maybe he was helping out at first," Street said.

She rolled down the driver's side window a few inches, and when Thompson ordered her to roll it down all the way, she knew something was wrong.

"He told me he needed my help and he wouldn't hurt me, but if I didn't get out of the car, he would have to hurt me," Street told the paper.

As she got out, Thompson grabbed her around the throat and put the 12-gauge shotgun to her head.

He dragged her back and forth in front of the food mart.

"He kept yelling that he wanted to talk to his daughter in Salem, and he wanted a helicopter and a news crew," Street said. "If not, he said, he wasn't afraid to shoot me."

At one point, Street said, Thompson attempted to fire the shotgun at her and then at the front of the building. He then tried to break the front-door glass with the butt of the gun, but failed.

Then he ordered her to the ground.

He let go of her neck and grabbed the back of her pants by her belt. "He kept yelling at the officer that he was going to shoot me," Nicole said.

She said she kept talking to Thompson to try to calm him, "thinking that if he was talking to me, he might not be thinking about shooting me."

She crouched on the ground and heard a gunshot.

At first, Street thought she had been shot, but when she turned around, she realized it was Thompson who had been hit by bullets from Lawler's AR-15 rifle.

That's when Street ran from the gas station and was helped by neighbors.

Street said she doesn't see herself as a victim.

"I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," she said. "Maybe if someone else would have been taken hostage, it wouldn't have worked out so well. I also don't blame the gas-station employees for locking the doors. If he had gotten inside, it may have turned out even worse."

The Sheriff's Office said in a statement Monday that a medical examiner's report showed Thompson died of gunshot wounds, but the office wasn't saying how many he sustained.

Street said she went back to the station Sunday and talked to staff members and planned Monday to get the gasoline.

"I'm really thankful no one shot my car," she said. "I'm sorry that the officer had to shoot and kill someone to save me, but I'm also very grateful that he did save me."