A Slice of Life
Bill Lites
The helicopter left the scene and officers began to return to their cars, so I assumed the excitement was over and went back to bed. My neighbor told me that later, after I had gone back to bed, they retrieved a pickup truck and an unmarked police car from the woods, and carried them away on a tow-truck. I had only seen what was going on in the street in front of my house, but my neighbor also informed me that she had seen and heard Sheriff’s vehicles on the power line sand clearing (trail) that runs alongside her house while all this activity was going on. That apparently was where the police officers/sheriff deputies had finally apprehended the suspect.
And now for the rest of the story!
A couple of days later I was able to view the 30-minute Sheriff’s Department helicopter video of the chase and discovered that the suspect was driving a pickup truck during the chase, and that the small dark car (with its lights off) was actually an unmarked police car at the front of the chase. When I had first been awakened and looked out the window, the suspect’s truck had already passed our house and rounded the corner, and I had thought the unmarked police car (with its lights off) was the suspect’s car. And, when I saw the two cars facing in opposite directions in the intersection, it was really two police cars, and the two officers must have been trying to work out their next move in the chase of the suspect. I also learned that, before racing thru our quiet little neighborhood, the suspect had been chased through a fatal hit-and-run police crime scene on U.S. #1, where he hit two police cars and nearly hit at least one officer. The video also showed the truck being chased off the paved streets into the woods and onto a power line clearing (trail) and a walking trail, where at one point a second person jumped out of the truck and ran off into the woods.
In a subsequent newspaper article, I learned that at some point in the chase, the suspect stopped long enough for deputies to attempt to arrest him. As they approach his truck, he refused to exit his vehicle and suddenly accelerated, ramming into a deputy’s car and speeding away. When the suspect was finally apprehended, having gotten stuck in the deep sand portion of the power line clearing (trail), he resisted arrest to the extent that officers had to TASER him. So, that was why the EMTs had been called, to make sure the suspect was OK after having been TASERED. That same newspaper article listed the following charges that had been filed against this suspect:
‘Grand theft of a motor vehicle, DUI with property damage, driving while license suspended/revoked/canceled with knowledge of first offense, reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident without giving information, four counts of aggravated assault of law enforcement officers with a weapon or firearm, two counts of aggravated fleeing or eluding an accident with injury or property damage, and one count each of fleeing or eluding with lights, siren, high speed or recklessness.’
And if that isn’t enough!
Today we learned, on the local NEWS, that Law Enforcement Authorities believed that the suspect, driving another vehicle, was the same person who hours before the chase I had witnessed, was the one who had caused the death of a motor cyclist on U.S. #1, and fled the scene. This was the very crime scene location on U.S. #1 at which the suspect, in the stolen truck, later had been chased through, hitting two police cars, before being chased into and through our neighborhood.
NEXT STOP FOR THIS SUSPECT
Now that’s what I call some real “Midnight Excitement” part of which had taken place right here in our very own quiet little neighborhood!
—–The End—–
Old Things R New 