Four people have been injured in a vicious three-vehicle crash in Raymond, Maine after a high-speed police chase.
Cellphone footage captured the moment 26-year-old Dale H. Tucker lost control of his 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt while attempting to evade the police. The video shows Tucker aggressively swerving to the right of the road in a bid to avoid a spike strip that was deployed by police officers. The left-side wheels of the sedan hit the spikes, sending the car into a sudden slide, directly towards a row of local drivers waiting on the side of the road.
The footage is particularly horrifying as it was filmed from the driver’s seat of one of the vehicles Tucker slammed into.
According to the Press Herald, local police officers were searching for Tucker after being informed he had “made threats of going to a residence in Windham and causing harm.”
In a bid to stop him, Deputy Joseph Dyer stopped Tucker at the intersection of Routes 302 and 35. When the officer asked him to pull into a nearby parking lot, he sped off. Dyer briefly pursued Tucker but stopped as he started to approach high speeds. Police claims the spike strip wasn’t what caused the accident.
“Usually, when spike mats are deployed, it is rapidly unfolding. We try to make it as safe as possible. If the suspect just drives over the strips, it is not a problem; if he tries to go around it or take other action, it becomes a problem.
“The spike strips does not cause someone to lose control of their vehicle; they deflate the tires very gradua/lly so they can keep control over the vehicle,” Hall said.
A 2000 Buick Park Avenue took the brunt of the impact with Tucker’s out-of-control Cobalt. Two of the occupants, aged 91 and 60, were taken to Maine Medical Center with serious injuries. The man filming from a 2018 Chevrolet Silverado Z71, Tyler Bisson, was not injured.
Tucker was charged with aggravated driving to endanger, aggravated eluding a law enforcement officer, criminal speed, and failure to main control of a vehicle.
Just trying to go to this store and than this happens pic.twitter.com/5aymAQEvhl
— Tyler Bisson (@BissonTyler) December 16, 2018