Updated: 3/10/2006 2:29:35 PM
An employee at the Roane County Courthouse went out three times with a convict on Maine's Most Wanted list.
Robert Fain had active warrants against him in four states, with prosecutors in Roane County planning to charge him with aggravated assault after they say he tried to run over two Kingston Police officers last Friday.
"He was the nicest guy you could possibly want to meet," Pam Smith thought of Fain after they met on her birthday, February 24. "Now, I feel like a fool."
Smith said Fain went to her office in Juvenile Court and met her co-workers the Friday afternoon he was captured. Pam said Fain was going to pick her up in the courthouse parking lot later that evening for dinner. Ten minutes before that was supposed to happen, a friend told her about looking people up on the internet.
"I typed in Robert Fain plus Maine," she recalled. "Maine's Most Wanted came up."
The website said Fain was wanted for writing bad checks and that Fain had an "extensive criminal history."
"Dear God," Pam thought. "What have I done?"
Pam said Fain told her he moved to Roane County after his wife had died. Now fearing for her safety, she called police in Maine, who told her to call local authorities.
Minutes later, members of the Kingston Police Department surrounded Fain's truck as he waited to pick up Pam for dinner.
"And all of the sudden, he threw it in reverse and tried to run over (Kingson Police Officer) Troy," Pam recalls. "Then (Fain) threw it in forward, and everyone started shooting. I just hit the ground. I just freaked."
Police shot at Fain's truck, eventually corralling him about a mile away. None of the officers were seriously hurt. Fain now sits at the Roane County Jail, less than 100 yards away from Smith's office.
Fain is due in court Monday. Smith is not sure if she will show up, though she has plenty of questions she would like to ask a former friend, now current foe.
"If I had been in the truck with you (Fain) and they had run the tags, what were you going to do to me," she wondered aloud. "Would you have killed me? Would I have been your hostage? You don't picture a criminal being a nice person."
