A 2023 Arkansas chase is back in a new YouTube video, and its ending is still a hard watch. What starts as a traffic stop turns into a high-speed chase with a wrecked patrol car.
The chase took place on Nov. 24, 2023. The trooper was Blayn Lucas. He stopped the dark green Dodge Challenger because he could not read its plate.
An earlier Natural State Transparency upload places the stop on I-630 at Marshall Street in downtown Little Rock. That video was posted on Dec. 1, 2023, days after the chase.
Now, MrHaos has included the clip in a Nov. 1 video of police chases. The Challenger chase starts at 10:32, though the earlier upload lets viewers watch it on its own.
Off and Running
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Lucas was walking toward the Dodge when the driver took off. As the car pulled away, its rear tires spun. Lucas had to get back behind the wheel to give chase.
The driver headed west on I-30, with Lucas following through traffic. After leaving the highway for local streets, the Dodge got back onto I-30 and kept going.
At a later exit, both cars left the highway again. Lucas entered a left-hand curve on the ramp, where his patrol car hit the concrete wall.
That impact ended his chase, and the Challenger got away. Lucas told dispatch he had crashed and lost the car he was chasing.
After the Impact
Carscoops quotes Lucas’s report on what went wrong: “As I began to take the exit, I did not decrease enough speed coming into the curve.” He wrote that the front-right corner hit the wall. His patrol car then traveled along it before coming to a stop.
His supervisor and other troopers came to the scene. A tow truck took the cruiser back to state police headquarters. Photos in the earlier coverage show damage down its passenger side and airbags that had gone off.
Lucas was taken to UAMS, a Little Rock hospital, for a medical check. The earlier coverage reported that he had avoided serious injury.