High Speed Chase (2023) s02e05 Episode Script

1
Coming right at you, guys.
The moment you're not ready for a threat,
that's when bad things happen.
He's at a dead end.
His running towards Victory Park.
He's got an infant in his hands.
In my 26 years of law enforcement,
I've never come
into a situation like that.
right now.
He's using his big vehicle as a weapon.
He's trying to run everybody over.
Somebody's gonna have to take a shot
on him. Lets go ahead and end it.
Oh, there's a fire! There's a fire!
Something's wrong with the driver.
He's on fire too.
It was all, get this person out now.
Get out! Get out! Get out now!
White Nissan.
Charges are traffic, fleeing.
Cutting in and out of traffic.
We got any units, uh, east of 74th?
What's your PC for a stop?
Traffic charges and fleeing.
Shut it down.
I was starting my shift
when the deputy out west attempted
to do a traffic stop on a vehicle.
He advised that that vehicle
was not stopping.
You think he's trying to get to Gifford?
Yes.
Gifford units, are you able to break
away from the disturbance?
I was headed northbound
on 258th Avenue, which is
towards the assigned area
that I was working at the time.
Gonna be north on 45th. He's going
around traffic, he's reckless again.
He ran the red light, 45th
northbound. I have him.
As soon as you see
the vehicle, it's about to get real.
At 21 I'm behind him,
he's pulling away from me.
He's still going east on 49th.
When I had attempted to stop the vehicle
by turning on my
emergency lights and siren,
he completely disregarded them.
Immediately,
I knew that he wasn't going to stop.
We have to ask ourselves,
is the juice worth the squeeze?
You must take into
consideration the time of day,
the number of motorists on the road,
pedestrians on the side of the road.
There's so many factors.
The decision was made at that
point just to let the helicopter
vector in on this subject
and tell us where he was going.
The time to get into the air is essential
because a high-speed chase is very fluid.
There are times where the vehicle
may be trying to exit our county,
or there may be times where the
occupant who's fleeing in the vehicle
may try to stop
the vehicle and flee on foot.
We're lifting off from the pad right
now, we'll be over site in a minute.
It's important that we get in the air
and above the fleeing vehicle
as quickly as possible
because that gives us an advantage
from the air that they
can't have from the ground.
I think I got it, 40.
I think eastbound 47th Street.
About to turn north
on 30. I think it's 36,
I don't have a map up yet.
The white SUV backing into, I think,
of 30th just south of 48th Street.
Trying to get a K-9 unit.
When we initially got the call
that the pursuit was happening,
it was actually during
one of our K-9 training days.
Everyone's running to their
trucks, throwing their gear on.
Let's see who can
get there first, type feel.
He's pulling in the back of a house.
He's trying to hide the car.
Make a right at the dead end.
He's guiding me
to a heavily residential area
with a lot of houses
pretty close to each other.
We have no idea what he's about to do.
A male is getting out of the car now.
Not that first house,
the second house on the right.
The car is between
the fence and the house.
As a K-9 handler, I went to go
into a position to try to head
him off should he run on foot.
Keep going.
He's in the driver's door
right now with the door open.
Right there, stop!
Right there, driver's door open.
Trying to back out, guys,
block him in. He can't get out.
Got him right there. Found 47.
I thought it was gonna be over.
It should have been over at that point.
Unfortunately, he did get back in his
vehicle and got back on the move,
which made me very angry.
Just went south on 38th
Avenue from 47th Street.
It is much harder to control your
vehicle in the smaller roads,
and he's trying to make turns to avoid us.
21, I'm gonna try and PI
if I can get the opportunity.
I knew that my time to PIT him
was gonna be extremely limited
as I wasn't gonna do that
on any residential street.
Coming up to 47th Street.
Back eastbound 47th Street,
eastbound 47th, guys.
He was, I think, pretty aware
of what I was trying to do.
So he would speed up or slow down.
He would just go
into a densely populated area.
It seemed as if he knew what he was doing.
21, I'm going to try and PIT.
Going into east on 46 Lane.
Never mind, don't have an opportunity.
If it's not done properly
or in the right conditions,
it can result in injury to
the person in the vehicle,
myself, or, you know, the general public.
And I don't want that to happen.
Eastbound on 46th Lane.
41st, southbound 41st Avenue.
Eastbound 46th Street from 41st Avenue.
Coming right at you, guys.
There's no long stretches of roadway.
It's a lot of side streets.
So your job is to block avenues of escape.
We work so hard
to get our patrol deputies to them
to try to block them in,
but we're not always successful.
So we just kind of start over.
Northbound 40th Avenue from 4600 block.
Passing Victory Park,
40th Avenue. Reckless.
This guy was incredibly desperate,
and he was doing whatever
he could to get away from us.
His actions were putting
our lives at greater risk,
his own life at a very high risk,
and also, the general public.
Eastbound 46th Street from 38th Court.
Northbound 38 Avenue.
It looks like we've got him
penned in this couple block area.
He's just making turns and
I don't know, I can't keep
an eye on your other guys.
He's just circling this area,
this 4 or 5 block radius right here.
Typically, someone fleeing in a vehicle,
they want to flee to an area
so they can abandon the vehicle
and run on foot.
When we had to run
the plates of the vehicle,
it was determined that
the person that owned the vehicle
was not the one that was driving.
It just leaves it kind of in the dark
with this complete unknown.
It just became more and more ridiculous
that he was just looping and turning
and U-turns, and he
didn't seem to have a plan
of where he was trying to get.
He was just trying to not stop.
As the evening traffic picked up,
there were more vehicles on the road.
I was hoping for one of the
exterior streets to initiate PI
as it's wide enough
and traffic is light enough
and there's way less people out.
At that point I felt like
I had the ability to end the pursuit.
The stakes are on at this point.
I was under a lot of stress
because this pursuit
had been going on for some time,
and myself and everybody
wanted this to be over.
So the pressure's on.
Trying to PIT.
Trying to PIT.
We've got a PIT, PIT maneuver.
But it was unsuccessful.
I actually hit the brakes,
and I wasn't able
to get further enough
forward on the rear of his vehicle.
So he only turned sideways
and then went off into the field.
He's going through the field,
going into High Ridge.
He's going through
the field, going northeast
through the field into High Ridge.
Myself and several other vehicles
went in the field also
to try to immobilize him.
I was more than willing
to sacrifice my vehicle
to stop the pursuit at that point.
But unfortunately,
with the traction control system
in my vehicle,
I couldn't accelerate in the grass.
Coming back out to 49th Street,
going to be westbound 49th Street.
I believe it maybe emboldened him
to continue to say,
"I'm gonna keep driving
and you're gonna have
to stop me if you can."
That lets you know that you're
gonna have to take actions
to completely disable the vehicle.
He's going to be southbound,
40th Avenue from 49th.
I was on 40th Avenue
and I hear he's trending in my direction.
And sure enough, I see the vehicle come
careening off of a side
road out in front of me.
Strikes one of our unmarked vehicles
and rips the bumper off of it.
The moment you get complacent
and you're not ready for a threat,
that's when bad things happen.
29 to all units, just stand down,
let the hawk see if we
can get this guy somewhere.
This is getting out of hand.
The chance of something going wrong,
the longer it goes, does us going.
A three-minute-long pursuit
isn't nearly as dangerous
30-minute-long pursuit
just because of the duration.
That's when our units start packing off.
It gives the allusion to the offender
that no they're no longer
in danger being apprehended.
They don't realize that
they are being followed.
They think, "Well, law
enforcement is cut and run,
they're not gonna try
to catch us anymore,"
and they go somewhere
and get out the vehicle.
Shut your fires down
and let us follow this guy.
There people everywhere
from the street out here.
As it continued, everyone
starts to come out their house.
And someone starts
standing on the side of road,
there are people cheering it on.
There are people waving to pull over,
no one's gonna take us
to hit someone for to go real badly.
Eastbound 49th Street passing 38 Circle.
Southbound 35th Avenue.
Westbound 47th Street from 35th Avenue.
And no units behind him,
still driving a high rate of speed.
When we're attempting
to throw stop sticks,
they're out of their vehicles
when they're doing that.
So they're an easy target,
if this guy wants to divert
our attempt to catch him
by striking one of our deputies.
It's a highly dangerous situation.
Got two good sticks
on 47th Street at 38th Avenue.
He's coming to 47th Place.
He's gonna be coming
47th Place to 40th Avenue.
Good stick hits, keep following him.
Deputy Ferrer,
he was hiding in the bushes,
concealing himself in the foliage
before he deployed the stop sticks.
The first opportunity the suspect
had knowledge of the deputy being there
and there being stop sticks was
when they were already in the road.
It was immediate deployment
and an immediate hit.
He's still on Lincoln, I believe
he's gonna be coming out
to 40th again from Lincoln.
Affirmative, northbound
on 40th from Lincoln Drive.
Good stop stick hit.
Whenever you hear that there's
a successful stop stick deployment,
it definitely gives you
that reassuring feeling
because now you know
that they're on borrowed time.
Eastbound 49th Street from 40th.
To 38 Circle, the Victory Park Apartments.
All right, shut this entrance down.
Do not let this guy back out of here.
He goes into Taylor Pointe
apartment complex.
It's a large complex, but it is,
once you go in the entry gate,
that's the only way you can get out.
He is putting the people
that live there at risk.
What is he going in there to do?
Is he going in there to hide
in somebody's apartment?
Is he gonna steal somebody's car in there?
Is he gonna hopefully
not take somebody hostage?
You know, what is he
gonna do? We don't know.
Are they a trained fighter?
Do they have a weapon on them?
Our goal is we're gonna
get them in handcuffs, so,
we're gonna do what we
need to do to do that.
He's southbound on the east side.
Southbound, on the west side, correction.
He's heading towards the south,
west side of it as we speak.
He's going through the parking lot now.
He's at the southwest corner,
I'll let you know what he does.
Somebody block off the gate,
not the entrance.
Block off the gate.
He's getting his car
pointed towards the gate.
You definitely get that little
bit of adrenaline spike
because you know, especially from
a canine handler point of view,
that it's only a matter
of time before this turns
to something on foot.
Very rarely after a pursuit like this
does someone just step
out and give up willingly.
He's at a dead end, guys, he's
trying to make a U-turn right there.
Alright, black male. He's running
toward Victory Park, guys.
Victory Park, through
the old Sunset Apartments.
Get someone at the southeast corner
of Victory Park Apartments.
I was coming in behind him.
I had every intention of ramming
his vehicle up into the fence
and just completely immobilizing
it so he couldn't keep moving.
As I was coming to a stop,
he's already out of his vehicle.
And he's running around
the front of the vehicle.
He's got an infant in his hands,
he has an infant with him.
He had an infant in his hand,
clutched it like a football,
so to speak, and was running
with a very small baby in his hands.
At that point, it's just
"Crap. What are we gonna do now?"
In my 26 years of law enforcement,
I've never come
into a situation like that.
We're in the last seconds
of the game, and now,
everything changes
because he has an infant with him.
I felt like I lost all the blood in
my body from my head down to my toes.
Kind of like, "oh my, I was
not expecting that at all."
And I was like,
"oh my, like, what is, like, I hope
nothing bad happens."
You know, it's a child.
You know, we don't want
to see the child get hurt.
It takes all of our tools off the table.
And now you're trying to process
that while come up with plan D
after A, B, and C have failed.
He's got an infant in his hands,
he has an infant with him.
I just jumped out of the car
and started chasing him on foot.
I got him, he does have
a baby in his hands.
He's at the back of the apartments.
I'm trying to think,
you know, I can't tackle him
because if I tackle him,
the kid's gonna hit the ground.
I can't tase him because
he's gonna drop the kid.
I can't use the dog
for all the same reasons.
I kind of closed the gap
to about six feet or so,
and he turns around
and just kind of
chest-passes the baby at me.
And thank God I was able to catch him.
Deputies were able
to come in and get on top of him,
and I was able to walk off
to the side with the baby.
106, he's in custody.
Once we had him in custody,
I felt amazing because he was
a very, very reckless individual,
with no regard
for his life or anybody else's,
whether it be the child, the public, us.
You know, he was a very,
very good person to apprehend.
One of the most dangerous things
in law enforcement is emotion.
We don't make decisions off an emotion.
We're supposed to be unbiased.
Having kids,
it's just one of those things,
you just can't fathom it.
You have these things in your mind of
what you do to keep those kids safe,
and this guy leading deputies
on a high-speed chase
and picking this kid up, and not
even two thoughts in the world
of what could happen to that kid.
Looking back, if I had known
there was an infant in the vehicle,
I would definitely
not have PIT the vehicle,
I would probably not even have chased it,
because if they got
into an accident or something,
it would be very detrimental to the child.
And we are not here for that.
Getting home, you know,
you look at your kids different.
You hold them different. You kind
of realize how precious they are
and how precious their life is.
- He's losing pieces of his car.
- What kind of parts
- are falling off his car?
- The frontend, the tires all blown.
Does it look like he hit something?
I don't know what's going on.
Oh Lord, he's gonna
Now it's sparking.
- He's wiggling all over. Holy cow!
- And you said he has flat tires too?
- Flat tires
- He's driving on the rims
Oh, lord, there's pieces flying.
I was set up running
radar on Sheridan Road.
And then I heard this call
come out on the radio.
- 734.
- Go ahead.
67th and Sheridan, there's gonna
be an older van, parts falling off,
flat tires, and he's driving on
the rims and the car's smoking.
I didn't know if the car was stolen.
I didn't know
if the driver had bad intentions.
And it kind of puts me
on high alert at that point.
- Oh, there is a cop car behind him.
- OK.
I don't wanna even get
Something's gonna fly off his car.
- Stay safe. Stay at a distance.
- Oh, but he's not stopping.
Typically, when you get a flat tire,
you start to feel it in your car
because your tires aren't even.
You can hear it thumping,
and it starts to grind
if you get on the wheels itself.
It was sparking.
So, the fact that they
have not stopped is surprising.
I chirped my sirens a couple of times.
Most people will stop within
100 to 200 feet once they see that.
But the person is not stopping.
I'm just kind of trying to gather
more information at this point.
Just visually trying to figure out
what in the heck is going on.
I'm heading north on Sheridan.
Officer Thorpe, I see him
and I see him activate his lights.
When the wheel starts
sparking, people tend to get out.
There's a bunch of things that we're
trying to evaluate at that point.
Is that person gonna be violent?
Were they stop-sticked in another county?
Were they involved in a pursuit?
Is this person incapacitated
and they can't get out?
I'm trying to give updates to dispatch.
Well, we're still going
I was just making sure that
the car was still in front of me
and wasn't gonna accelerate.
Nothing crazy was going to happen.
Car's on fire.
Oh, there's fire, there's a fire.
- He's leaving a trail of fire.
- Is he moving with the fire?
Yeah, the fire, there's a line of
fire. Good lord. It's all on fire.
It looks like Back to the Future.
Like, it starts sparking,
and then now it's starting to ignite.
Car's on fire.
743 I'm behind the vehicle,
it's on fire right now.
10-4, is it still rolling?
Copy, we're at Sheridan and 73rd.
As we follow the car,
I'm just trying to figure out
what would make a person continue driving
while the entire backend
of their vehicle's up in flames.
Anybody who has their vehicles on fire
is going to stop that car and get out.
That was probably the biggest
red flag about all of this.
Why does this person not getting out?
Now, I'm thinking, "Okay, this person
doesn't want to stop for police."
Your threat assessment kind of goes up.
Is this person dangerous?
Is this person gonna run?
With the vehicle being a mini van,
I was concerned as I didn't know
how many people were in the car.
It's dark out, it's hard
to see inside the vehicle.
There could be seven people in that car.
Our job is preservation of life.
That's our first mission. I don't
know if something else is occurring
to why he's staying in that vehicle,
but something's wrong with the driver.
We saw the driver's side door kick open.
For some reason, it kind of looked
like he went back into the car.
My mind began racing about
what the person
could possibly be reaching for.
Another person, a weapon of some sort.
People do drastic things in
drastic situations.
He's on fire too!
He's on fire. The man is on fire?
The man's on fire.
Get out! Get out now!
As I got close to him, I saw
that he wasn't moving very fast.
I realized that this became more
of a rescue mission
than a law enforcement mission.
And me and Cody just kind of grabbed him.
It was all reaction.
It was all, get this person out now.
It was incredibly hot.
I could really feel it when I was
right up on him,
and I grabbed ahold of the driver.
And that's when I got burned on my hand.
There wasn't a whole
lot of methodical thought
going into this.
This is all adrenaline.
When he opened up the car door,
it went from a sealed container
to an open container,
and all of the fresh oxygen
was flowing into the car,
which was causing the car to become
more and more engulfed in flames.
It could explode.
My biggest goal was getting
the three of us out of harm's way
as soon as possible.
Come on. Get up, get, get up!
- Anyone on the car?
- Yeah.
743, start EMS,
we need fire here immediately.
We realized that, hey,
he cannot really care for himself.
Stand up for me, let's get aways from
this. Help him up. Come on, man.
Help me get to my feet.
He wouldn't walk when we
told him to. He fell down.
Come on. Stand up, man.
All units responding,
stay away from the vehicle.
Stand up for me, come on.
We gotta get you up.
We decided to just pick him up
and run with him, because
if he wasn't gonna move fast,
we were gonna make him move fast.
We got to get him out.
Come on. Pick up. Pick him up
You wanna get him in my squad car?
Get him in the squad right now.
- Can someone ID him?
- Sir, we need to get to my car, okay?
Okay.
Go!
Once we realized the driver was safe
and there was no one else in the car,
it was kind of like,
"Holy cow, what did we just do?"
Can you take the jacket off?
I wanna make sure you're
not burned on your arm.
Okay, we've got an ambulance coming,
but I need to check and make sure.
His jacket was melted,
so I expect him to have
some kind of injury, some kind of burns.
Well, okay, awesome.
No, no burns to him. His jacket's
burnt but he's got zero burns on him.
The fact that he had
small burns to his clothing
but none to his skin
is an absolute miracle.
- Sir, do you know what happened?
- I blew a tire and I can't find one.
- Why?
- I thought I could make it home.
We didn't get any signs
of intoxication or impairment.
He just wanted to make it home that night.
- Yeah, older gentleman.
- There's nothing wrong with him.
He literally said,
"Yeah, I knew it was on fire."
There's a loud explosion.
And we all kind of stop.
Did that really just happen?
Sir, did you have oxygen bottles
or anything like that in the car?
- What would be blowing up?
- No idea.
What's in there?
- I wonder if they're pop cans.
- Pop cans?
The explosion that we heard
was not from pop cans.
Our best guess is
it was probably the tires.
- Good job, buddy.
- We got her done.
That's crazy, man.
Did they pull him out?
That's a life-saving man right there.
I think so.
There's stuff to always
learn from every single call.
But hopefully there's not
a next time for something like this.
We did the best we could
with the information we got,
and we had a good outcome.
Which is all we can ask for.
I'm just thankful that everyone ended up
being okay afterwards.
Stolen vehicle in the area
of 31 Newman Crossing Bypass.
There's a caller advising he's tracking
a tractor-trailer that's stolen.
It was a slow morning,
then a call came out that a semi
had been stolen out of Fulton County
and was headed down the interstate.
The units that were
following the tractor trailer
advised that
it was getting off at exit 41,
which is where I was
located and standing by.
And when it stopped at the red light,
I was on the other side
of the intersection, waiting.
I went into this traffic stop thinking
the driver, you know,
was just gonna pull over.
The driver just continues
and got back on the interstate
going northbound back towards Atlanta.
I knew that there was gonna be a chase.
Such a large truck
could have easily rammed a citizen
causing them to lose control
and could be catastrophic.
We just need to get this
stopped as soon 0as possible.
Semi thefts are very unusual.
The normal citizen
don't really know how to drive
an 18-speed transmission.
It's not like your normal sports car.
And he was actually
driving it pretty well.
After we go about
a mile or two, I thought, well,
he's not gonna pull over
so we have to think of
other ways of getting
him off this roadway.
Six-two, you wanna try to PIT him?
I'm gonna try.
Sergeant Fausett
decided to attempt a PIT maneuver.
They're going at traffic pace.
I didn't know what was gonna happen.
I've never seen a bobtail tractor trailer,
being PIT-ed before.
It was the unknown at that point.
Alright, attempted PIT. Didn't work.
Still northbound passing the 42.
Due to the size
and the weight of the semi,
the vehicle did not move one bit.
I remember smoke and debris coming off
and the truck did not move at all.
It was just unsuccessful.
I'll try it one more time.
Alright, PIT's not working.
I don't know if any of our vehicles
are heavy enough to push him.
I don't think it is.
I think the driver knew
that we couldn't stop him,
and I think this only emboldened him.
- What's your speed?
- 76 mph.
If we didn't get the truck stopped,
he could have gotten into Atlanta
with heavier traffic,
you know, caused serious injury.
We had to change tactics
and find another way to end this pursuit.
Any zone one units able to get sticks out?
- I'll try get some out.
- Ten-four.
Another deputy said that
he was gonna be at exit 47
with some stop sticks.
Alright, swerving over to the middle lane.
Back to the left.
Half a mile from the 47.
I began calling out on
the radio which lane we were in
so he could know which
lane to throw the stop sticks at
since they can't stretch
across the whole highway.
Back into the middle lane.
Alright 129, we're passing the
first off-ramp. Still middle lane.
All right, coming up to you
at 129. Number three lane.
You could tell when there's
a good hit, you'll see sparks.
Alright, swerved and missed the sticks.
I really thought this was gonna
be what ended this pursuit.
To keep him contained,
we attempted to box in the offender,
trying to surround
the vehicle with our patrol cars
and then slowly decrease speed.
I pulled up beside him and
I tried to get a look at the driver,
try to figure out
what his state of mind was.
He's swerving at us right now.
But I couldn't get a good look at him
because he began
swerving towards our vehicles.
Being such large size,
it could have just ran over
the vehicles and kept going.
It was clear that boxing the offender
was not gonna be effective as well.
Swerving, back and forth right
now in front of one of our trucks.
He's swerving at civilians now.
He swerved at a civilian that
was yielding to the right shoulder,
narrowly missing him.
He's trying to run everybody over.
He made it clear that he's willing
to use his big vehicle as a weapon.
If this goes on, somebody's going
to have to take a shot on him.
I knew at this point
that we were going to end up
having to use deadly force.
I think the safest way to do this
is going to be to try to take a shot
through the window,
to the driver's side door on him.
The SWAT commander in an unmarked
pickup truck, came over the radio.
And he said he could pull up
alongside the tractor trailer
and take a shot at the vehicle
and get him stopped.
Once you all clear these, other
semis, let's go ahead and end it.
All right, make a clear path
and I'll try get up beside him.
Shots fired.
You could see the shots
hit the cab of the semi-truck.
Alright, I think we got him.
The driver's obviously hit
because he starts to swerve over.
Has he stopped?
Has he stopped?
Driver! Driver!
Step down to the vehicle.
Put your hand up in the window.
Driver, put your hands out of the window.
Hands, both of your hands out the window.
Both your heads out the window.
Open the door and step out.
Open the door.
Open the door.
Keep your hands up. Open the door.
Step out.
Step out of the truck.
Do not move. Do not move.
Do not move!
So after we removed
the suspect from the vehicle,
it was apparent that he suffered
from some gunshot wounds.
We rendered aid until EMTs
came and he was transported
to the hospital from
there, where he survived.
This was actually my first police
chase with a vehicle this large.
I was kind of dumbfounded.
I didn't know how we were
gonna get this semi stopped.
Still to this day, I don't know,
you know, why he stole the vehicle
or what he was trying to accomplish.
So it's just a relief
knowing that we
apprehended the fleeing felon
without any citizens
or officers getting injured.