Four teenagers in a stolen SUV were killed after their vehicle lost control in a high-speed cop chase.
The pursuit began when the Honda CRV taken from Gainesville, Florida, was picked up by a license plate reader.
A deputy with the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office followed the SUV and said there were multiple people riding it.
The chase on April 20 reached up to 111mph.
Deputies stopped pursuing the SUV at the county line because it was going so fast they could not keep up, said Bradford County Chief Deputy Brad Smith, according to the Main Street Daily News.
‘Our vehicles cannot match the speed that they were going, but we did continue one of our units to try and stay as close as they could as a backup unit to (the Florida Highway Patrol) until Alachua County’s units were able to catch up to them,’ stated Smith.
A trooper then made contact with the SUV and observed ‘that some of the occupants appeared to be wearing ski masks’, according to the highway patrol.
Upon contact, the SUV slowed down and the trooper used a ‘Precision Immobilization Technique (PIT maneuver) on the fleeing Honda to stop the threat created by the fleeing suspect’, stated the highway patrol. It involves making a vehicle turn sideways and steering into it.
The SUV then rolled over and struck a cement pole. It appeared ‘wrapped around a concrete utility pole’, stated Alachua County Fire Rescue.
First responders pulled the passengers out after 90 minutes and two were pronounced dead at the scene. Two others died at a nearby hospital. All of the victims were aged 14 to 16.
Two of the victims were students at Newberry High School and have been identified as Jabril Cheevers and Lawrence McClendon Jr, who was a defensive back for the football team.
Smith said the sheriff’s office confirmed with the Gainesville Police Department ‘that they still had that car entered as stolen, and the officer waited until he had three backup units with him before he initiated the traffic stop’.
Newberry Mayor Jordan Marlowe told the newspaper: ‘It’s concerning when you have so many deaths back to back, but all we can do as a community is wrap our arms around each other, love each other, ask ourselves what we need to be doing, and then do it.’
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