- Arkansas police spotted an allegedly stolen Dodge and initiated a pursuit.
- The chase ended when the Charger reportedly crashed while traveling at 160 mph.
- The crash ejected the driver from the vehicle, but he miraculously survived.
Stolen cars can be big business these days and Arkansas police received word to keep an eye out for one such vehicle on August 9. The next day they spotted the car in question. What they didn’t know is that the chase would lead to speeds of up to 160 mph (258 km/h) and a fiery crash that ejected the driver.
The initial report of the stolen Dodge Charger came from Memphis, TN. On the 10th of August, Arkansas State Troopers allegedly identified the same car about an hour from the Tennessee capital. They began pursuing it but this is a Charger Hellcat we’re talking about. Cars that are less powerful have evaded this same police force in the past.
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“The Charger was listed in a BOLO [be on the lookout] the previous night after it was discovered that the VIN plate had been swapped out, and the vehicle being registered in Arkansas under the new false VIN,” Trooper Blaine Middlecoff wrote in his report. “I notified other troopers who were en route to the area to assist, and decided to follow the suspect vehicle to allow time for other units responding to get closer,” the trooper added.
In this case though, the driver seemed incapable of leveraging that power to escape. Less than five minutes into a very one-sided chase, the Charger driver ran a stop sign at the intersection of West Calhoun Street and the Blues Highway. Just past that, there’s a train track with a slightly raised section of road.
Video from the dashcam of the police car appears to show that piece of road acting as a ramp when the Dodge reaches it. The car tumbles end over end briefly and lands in a ditch to the right of the road. By the time the officer catches up, the driver isn’t in the car.
Instead, he lay in a field and claimed that instead of driving the car, that he was a bystander and the car actually hit him. Officers quickly determined that wasn’t the case and took the suspect, DeVandre James, into custody. Seeing as he was thrown from the car, authorities had him flown to Regional One Medical center in Memphis, says KAIT.
What feels ironic is that the 18-year-old landed on the other side of the street from a cemetery. Hopefully, he’ll appreciate just how close he came to death both literally and figuratively, and get his life turned around.