When people run from the police they risk all sorts of damage to life and limb. In the case of one pickup truck driver, he found out what it was like to get rolled into a ditch. Then, he watched as the police car that hit him caught on fire and burned to a crisp with his truck only inches away.
This chase went down in southwest Little Rock, Arkansas on November 29th. As innocently as it starts it’s hard to believe how firey it’ll get. A single Saline County officer attempts to pull over a pickup truck that then decides to run. An Arkansas State Police trooper ends up joining the chase almost immediately.
As the ASP officer takes over the chase he closes the gap between himself and the truck and then goes in for the PIT maneuver. Initially, he pushes the truck into the ditch on the right side of the road. When the truck isn’t disabled and attempts to continue, the trooper continues the assault and pushes him into the left ditch which causes the truck to roll onto its passenger side.
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Officers from both pursuit vehicles pop out and begin giving commands to the driver and passenger to exit the vehicle. As they focus on the two suspects they’re incapable of seeing the ASP vehicle on the other side of the overturned pickup.
At the 3:22 mark of the video, flames begin to pop up from behind the front driver’s side wheel. Almost two full minutes before officers realize what’s going on and at that point, the Dodge Charger paid for with citizen tax dollars is full of smoke. As one officer attempts to handle both suspects from the truck, the other begins pulling equipment out of the trunk of the burning car.
Finally, three minutes after the fire begins, the officer uses a fire extinguisher on the blaze. Of course, having a single fire extinguisher to fight a fire that’s been going on for several minutes under a hot car isn’t optimal. In this case, it proves to be far short of enough, and not long after the entire car is fully engulfed in the conflagration. According to the video description, nobody was seriously injured.