Driver fleeing police in Essex County, N.J. dies after crashing vehicle
EAST ORANGE, N.J. – A driver who was fleeing police in Essex County died after crashing into several other vehicles Tuesday.
The state attorney general's office said the driver was behind the wheel of a vehicle of interest in a pending robbery investigation.
Detectives with the Bloomfield Police Department followed the vehicle from Bloomfield to Newark, where they tried to pull the driver over, but the driver allegedly refused to stop.
Authorities said the detectives continued to pursue the driver into East Orange, where the driver slammed into another vehicle, then crashed into a parked ambulance and a third vehicle.
The driver died from injuries sustained in the crash. The driver's identity has not yet been released.
Two other drivers suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
East Orange resident Jazmin Serrano arrived to get her 2-year-old son out of an Early Head Start program in a building across from the crash scene.
"I just got a call from the principal in the school saying to please pick up your kid, not to be alarmed, that there is an ambulance and police officers here, so I just quickly left work and came up to pick up my child," Serrano said. "Unfortunately, there's somebody deceased from what I heard ... There's a lot of cars, tragically, that really go fast all the time, and I wish they could put some type of bumps or something here to kind of prevent that."
Authorities said the police vehicles involved in the pursuit were not directly involved in the deadly crash.
The investigation is ongoing.
Initially, sources told CBS New York that a pedestrian was killed, but authorities said all civilians involved suffered non-life-threatening injuries.