A call about a kicked-in door in Port Orchard, Washington quickly evolved into a high-speed chase across two counties on Sunday night. It only ended after deputies were able to flatten a tire and spinning the fleeing SUV to a stop, the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office says. A 32-year-old Tacoma woman was arrested and now faces a string of charges. Two passengers were in the car with her, a teenager among them, and deputies say neither was hurt.
It began just before 9 p.m. A man called 911 to report that a woman had kicked down the door of his home. According to the sheriff’s office, she told him she was searching for a missing 16-year-old girl. What her connection to that teenager was, and whether the girl was truly missing, the department has not explained. Deputies spotted a white SUV a short time later and tried to pull it over.
The SUV still didn’t stop, forcing deputies to follow it all the way out of South Kitsap County and into Pierce County. In the video, a passenger can be seen waving from a window. That passenger later told deputies she’d feared for her life and begged the driver to pull over. Ending the chase took two moves: spike strips were laid down and the SUV lost at least one tire. But that still didn’t work, as the driver continued on. Another deputy then used a trusty PIT maneuver to spin the vehicle to a stop at an intersection. That’s when the driver finally stepped out with her hands raised.
The driver was booked and held without bail. The charges against her include burglary, attempting to elude law enforcement, reckless driving, and driving with a revoked license as a habitual traffic offender. The 16-year-old she claimed she had been searching for was actually in the SUV the whole time, alongside the frightened passenger.
What Charges is the Driver Facing?
The driver is up for some serious counts: first up is burglary. Breaking into a house is obviously a serious property crime. You can’t just walk up and decide to go into someone’s home. That’s part of what the driver will have to answer to when they eventually head to court.
The most serious of those is attempting to elude the police. In Washington, refusing to stop for a marked patrol car and then driving recklessly to get away is a class C felony. It’s a felony traffic offense, not a ticket, and it can carry up to five years in prison. That law actually exists to discourage high-speed chases like this one. It even allows a longer sentence when a driver’s flight endangers people other than the driver and the pursuing officer.
Who Was Actually in Danger?
A passenger was pleading with her to stop, so frightened she waved out the window for help. That counts as dangerous to us – there was something to be scared of, after all. The 16-year-old the driver claimed to be searching for was in the car too, through the spike strips, the blown tire, and the final spin. Neither of them, deputies say, was hurt. That they were unhurt at all owes as much to luck as to anything else.
A driver that’s making a break for it endangers just about everyone involved. Spike strips and a PIT maneuver are aggressive, but they’re meant to stop a dangerous pursuit before it becomes a crash. Those tactics definitely worked here, and everyone came out of the situation fine. But that’s not always how it works out; so if you’re thinking of evading the police in a lengthy car chase after burglarizing a home, maybe stop and don’t do that. You don’t have to ruin your life in a couple of swift moves.