02x05 - Terror on the Interstate

[bunniefuu]

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 expl*si*n.

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 expl*si*n 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 g*nsh*t 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.