Here’s a story that proves the old saying about how the guilty flee when no one’s chasing them. Except in this case, someone actually was chasing, just not the guy who decided to floor it.
A sheriff’s deputy in Coweta County, Georgia was running laser on Interstate 85 last week, doing the kind of routine speed enforcement that keeps traffic honest. He clocked an SUV doing 89 in a zone that clearly didn’t call for it, and started to pull out to go after that vehicle. Nothing unusual there. It’s the kind of stop that happens a thousand times a day on interstates across the country.
But before the deputy could even get moving, a completely different car decided the mere presence of a patrol vehicle was reason enough to panic. A modified Ford Focus took off like it had somewhere to be yesterday, and deputies say it hit speeds north of 140 mph while weaving through traffic on I-85. The irony here is hard to miss. This driver wasn’t even the one being targeted. He just assumed the worst and made a very expensive decision in about half a second, according to FOX 5 Atlanta.
Once the Focus bolted, the deputy’s attention naturally shifted. Body camera footage shows the car darting between lanes at a speed that gives most of us sweaty palms just watching it on a dash cam, let alone living it from behind the wheel. And here’s the part that really drives the point home: had this driver just stayed cool and kept it at a normal speed, he almost certainly would have sailed right past that deputy while the SUV driver got the ticket instead.
Said one YouTube comment: “What a goofball.”
A Chase That Didn’t Need to Happen
Deputies identified the driver as 21-year-old Eric Jerome Chatman of Newnan.
According to the sheriff’s office, Chatman was driving recklessly, weaving in and out of traffic, and reaching speeds in excess of 140 mph before deputies were able to catch up with him.
How It Ended
The pursuit came to a close when the deputy performed a PIT maneuver, spinning the Focus out and bringing the chase to an end.
No easy feat at those speeds, and a good reminder that law enforcement training for these scenarios exists for exactly this reason.
The Charges Add Up Fast
Chatman now faces reckless driving, felony fleeing, and several other traffic violations, including driving on a suspended license. That last one probably explains a lot about why he panicked at the sight of a patrol car in the first place. A suspended license has a way of turning an ordinary Tuesday into a very bad day the moment a badge shows up in the mirror.
As deputies pointed out, if Chatman had simply kept driving normally, he likely wouldn’t have caught anyone’s attention at all, and the original speeder in the SUV would have been the one explaining himself on the side of the road.
Sometimes the best way to avoid trouble is to not go looking for it at 140 mph.