I had a very troubling experience late last night. I was driving on River Parkway in St. Paul and I was within 1-2 blocks of the location that Dan Zamlen vanished from. All of a sudden I saw a young man in the road. He was in the right lane and waving his hands in the air and VERY clearly trying to flag me down. He was tall, slender, had brown hair (from what I could tell it was light-ish brown, but it was dark), and was wearing jeans a pull over sweater that looked like fleece, and no jacket. He wasn't dead center in the middle of my lane, but he was far enough into it that I had to veer into the lane of oncoming traffic to miss hitting him- there were no oncoming cars.
The wave he was doing was both hands over his head, back and forth, if that makes sense. He didn't look panicked or like he was running from anyone. He also easily could have banged on my car as I passed had he been frantic as the speed limit is 25 on that road and because I saw him I had slowed down to about 15 MPH and I passed within a couple feet of him. I also didn't see any other people or a car anywhere nearby that could have belonged to him. A block or two up the road after passing him, I saw another car coming from the opposite direction about a block away and I knew they would see him as well.
I was really, really concerned and wanted to stop, but I was alone. I'm a 33 year old woman and at the moment I passed him the road was completely desolate. I had my own safety to think of and stopping for random men on the side of the road trying to get my attention in the middle of the night on a quiet road just isn't safe. I absolutely would have stopped had he looked panicked, like he was running from someone, or banged on my car or something of the sort. He wasn't stumbling like he was intoxicated or wet like he'd been in/near the river. Even though he didn't have a jacket and it's January in Minnesota, it was warm last night by January standards. It was probably 25-30 degrees at that time and not really windy. Staying outside all night in those temps would be bad, but we were also within 6 or 7 blocks of open gas stations and other businesses and he had enough clothes on that making that walk would be safe.
I immediately thought of these cases and I can't even begin to describe the unsettling, foreboding, and downright creepy feeling I had. The second I passed him, I checked the clock and noted the time as 1:55am. Bar close in Minnesota is 2am. My concern got the better of me, so I doubled back about ten minutes later and was going to call the police depending on what I saw when I got back to where he was, but when I got back to the spot there was a police car on the side of the road in the exact spot. I couldn't tell if the young man was inside, but as I passed the police car pulled out behind me and followed me for a block or two until I turned off the road.
Thankfully, I see nothing on the news this morning in regards to a young man disappearing.