Authorities popped a tire and the driver didn’t compensate for the loss of traction
- A car owner in Massachusetts used his car’s GPS tracker to locate his stolen Lexus IS and aided police in its recovery.
- After a police pursuit, the stolen Lexus lost control on the highway and crashed, sustaining significant damage.
- Thankfully, despite the high-speed chase and subsequent crash, nobody was injured.
A man’s Monday morning in Peabody, Massachusetts started with a jolt – his Lexus IS was missing. He quickly contacted the police and used his car’s GPS tracker to locate it. Unfortunately, the chase that followed ended with the stolen Lexus in ruins, as documented by news crews who captured footage of the car losing control on the highway and nearly causing a major accident.
Technology baked into cars could help to reduce thefts or at least enable authorities to recover vehicles. Certainly, that’s what this owner hoped when he contacted the Massachusetts State Police. His ability to see the car on GPS no doubt provided some comfort at the time.
Read: 13-Year-Old In Dodge Challenger Leads Florida Police On 140 MPH Chase At 4 A.M.
“It was going everywhere,” the owner said. “They went to Burger King. I saw receipts in the car. They went to Burger King, McDonald’s. They had a good time.
“We were tracking it. I would give out the closest cross streets [to police],” the man’s brother told WCVB news. “We’d go back and forth, and then they eventually caught up with the Air Wing.”
Once officers caught up they used a spike strip to pop at least one of the tires on the Lexus. While authorities weren’t specific about when that happened in relation to the chase’s end, it appears as though the car drove for some time after hitting the spike strip.
Video from before the crash shows damage to the rear passenger-side quarter panel as if a tire had disintegrated while the car was moving. In addition, the crash itself seems to indicate that the same tire was compromised. The driver was speeding along with a police helicopter in pursuit when a simple lane change caused the rear of the vehicle to step out.
The driver couldn’t correct the slide, went off of the road, and smashed into a tree. Impressively, one truck that was also on the highway appeared to be so alert that they avoided the sliding Lexus by mere inches. MSP didn’t announce who the three suspects were, but did confirm that all three escaped without major injury and that one was a juvenile.
“For the record, we have a rigorous pursuit policy that governs when and how we pursue suspect vehicles,” a spokesperson with the MSP said to WCVB.
“Further, a commissioned officer in the troop where the pursuit is occurring authorizes and assumes command and control of every pursuit in real time and remains in constant radio communication with the pursuing troopers, continually monitoring such factors as speed, traffic volume, and density of the surrounding area to determine whether the pursuit should proceed or be terminated. We are confident in the rigor and propriety of our pursuit policy,” the spokesperson for the state police added.
Why the officers didn’t attempt to simply take the car in the middle of the night we may never know. The owner likely wishes they’d done exactly that. “I worked so hard for it. I’ve only had it for six or seven months,” the owner of the car said. “I put a lot of money into it, a lot of time, and then it just rips apart in front of you. It kind of sucks… Obviously, I was upset but there’s really nothing I could do. It wasn’t in my control.”
Thankfully, and most importantly, nobody was injured during the crash.