Top row: Antoinette Griffin, 13; Antonio Miller, 13; David Summers, 14
Second row: Dominique Hurtt, 15, Quentin Reed, 18 Not pictured: John Lindsey Meyers Jr., 15 (DRIVER); Erica Stevenson, 15
Posted on 12/30/2003 10:17:44 AM PST by DCBryan1
Police: Chase followed policy
7 teens die in wreck speeding on U.S. 21
ERICA BESHEARS, ROBERT MOORE & KATHRYN WELLIN
A 15-year-old boy at the wheel of a stolen car lost control and crashed as he sped from a police officer early Monday, killing himself and six other Statesville teenagers in the car, authorities said.
Troutman police Officer Keith Bills tried to stop the northbound white 2001 Dodge Intrepid just after midnight on U.S. 21 because it was weaving and speeding, according to the N.C. Highway Patrol.
The Highway Patrol said John Lindsey Myers Jr. was the driver. The others who died were identified as: Antonio Miller, 13; Antoinette Griffin, 13; David Summers, 14; Erica Stevenson, 15; Dominique Hurtt, 15; and Quentin Maurice Reed, 18. Antoinette and Erica were sisters.
Monday's crash, between Troutman and Statesville about 35 miles north of Charlotte, [at Hwy 21 and Cumberland Road] was the deadliest in North Carolina since 1997.
Friends and relatives of those killed questioned whether the pursuit was justified, but Troutman police said the officer followed department policy.
Authorities said Reed was the only one in the car who carried identification. Officers sought the public's help in identifying the rest Monday morning.
Parents across Iredell County awoke to the news and the fear that their children -- if they had not com]home Sunday night -- might be among the dead.[WHAT?! Very curious statement.]
More than a dozen parents called the Highway Patrol office in Statesville, worried that their children had been in the car. Troopers asked them to describe their kids. If the descriptions sounded accurate, they directed them to one of three hospitals where the bodies were taken.
Howard Hurtt went to work Monday feeling that something wasn't right."I was called by my wife at work to come to the hospital and identify the body," he said. "(Dominique) told me he was staying over at a friend's house."
Hurtt questioned whether Troutman police should have pursued the car. The officer could have taken down a tag number and stopped, he said. "You follow them, you don't push them to go faster," Hurtt said. "I think they were forced into a high-speed chase and they panicked. ...."Here we've got seven deaths. My only son."
Troutman Police Chief Eric Henderson said Bills followed department policy by radioing his supervisor and turning on his video camera when he initiated the pursuit."As of right now, all evidence we have indicates he was following policy and did the right thing," Henderson said. Bills, a Troutman officer since 1999, remains on active duty and has not been disciplined. "Naturally, he's upset; we're all upset," Henderson said.
Henderson and the N.C. Highway Patrol gave this account:
At about midnight, Bills noticed the Dodge driving erratically, crossing the double yellow line and speeding. [Witnesses said the car was doing between 80 and 100 miles per hour]. He followed the car for no more than 1.5 miles, before turning on his blue lights in Barium Springs near Moose Club Road.
Bills radioed his supervisor, turned on his car's video camera and requested that Statesville police be notified. Trooper Jason Fleming said the Troutman officer was not immediately behind the Dodge at the time of the wreck, but "just close enough to keep them in sight."
Bills chased the car for about 15 seconds at about 100 mph and backed off about three-quarters of a mile away from the car just before the crash, Henderson said. Bills stopped because of the high speeds and because he believed the Statesville police would set up tire-puncturing devices and catch the car.
About a mile south of Statesville, and outside Troutman limits, the Dodge ran off the right side of the roadway near Cumberland Road. The car hit an embankment, struck a tree and landed on its roof in a creek, the patrol said. All seven occupants died at the scene.
The patrol-car video is in the possession of the Highway Patrol. No alcohol or drugs were found in the car.The Dodge, which had a small spare tire on the right rear wheel, was reported stolen Monday.
Francisco Gallardo, 24, woke up about 11:30 a.m. and looked in the gravel driveway where he had parked the Intrepid the night before. It was gone. He walked a couple of blocks from his home on Wilson Lee Boulevard in Statesville and called police from a pay phone,[to report the car stolen], he said.
"They told me what happened," said Gallardo, adding that his father had let him borrow the car. "I couldn't believe it. It's like something from out of a movie."
Also on Monday, authorities said they were investigating Reed's possible role in a home-invasion robbery in Mooresville Sunday night. Six Mooresville residents reported that two men, armed with a gun, forced their way into a home and took more than $200 and a cell phone, according to a Mooresville police report.
On Monday, four of the six robbery victims identified Reed as one of the assailants, Police Chief John Crone said. The other robbery suspect has not been identified, he said.
The Iredell wreck was the deadliest in North Carolina since 10 high school students died in 1997 in Plymouth, 100 miles east of Raleigh in Washington County. In South Carolina, the deadliest recent collision occurred in 2000, when eight died in a two-vehicle wreck on Interstate 26.
Troutman Town Manager Donald Duncan said the wreck was the first fatal pursuit the town police had been involved in, to his knowledge.Since 1994, at least 20 people have died in crashes involving police pursuits in the Carolinas.
On Saturday, three teens were hospitalized when they sped from an officer in Pineville. Their conditions weren't available Monday. At the Troutman crash scene near midday Monday, Highway Patrol troopers measured skid marks and retraced the vehicle's path.
Eugene Arnold brought his son Nellow Brown, 14, to view the site. Nellow was friends or cousins with most of the kids in the car, and they had wanted to pick him up. Arnold wouldn't let him go."I brought him down here to show him the outcome," he said. "Everybody he grew up with is dead."
Arnold pondered the police pursuit. On one hand, he said, police have a job to do. But, "I think there could have been other ways to go about it," he said. "They could have backed (off) a little bit. I don't really say they're wrong."
The wreck hit especially hard in south Statesville. Several of the crash victims lived there, and at three homes Monday, friends came by to offer condolences. "So many of these children (in the community) are related to each other," said Statesville Middle School Principal Pam Helms, who blinked back tears as she looked at photographs of Antonio, David, Antoinette and Dominique in last year's yearbook.
About 1:30 p.m., Antonio's mother, Sandy Miller, got out of a pickup truck in front of her home on Caldwell Street.Her face and eyes were red from crying. Friends and neighbors who had been sitting on nearby porches walked from every direction and tried to console her on the sidewalk in front of her house. Miller raised her arms in anguish, as friends embraced her.
Her voice rose. "Wake my son up!" She looked at her friends, then toward the sky and asked:
"Can you wake him up? Please wake my son up. He was only 13."
-- STAFF WRITERS DIANNE WHITACRE, BRIDGETT NESBIT AND RESEARCHER MARION PAYNTER CONTRIBUTED. --
Parents were too busy arranging their next drug deal.
I was wondering about the BLUE bandana the one kid is wearing in the picture shown......crips...bloods...eastside....westside??????
Its not like "tags" aren't easily changed or anything.
To put it in perspective, if I were a scofflaw, I'd have no problem with fleeing if my chances of being chased were minimal. Drive down the road a few miles, ditch the car in an alley, and steal another vehicle. 'Getting away with it' is half the fun of the whole affair. The 'no chase' policy is destined to failure.
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