Car Being Pursued By Police Plows Into 6 High School Students; Driver Dies After Hitting A Tree
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A car city police were pursuing crashes into six teens and then a tree. The driver is dead, and now several of those teens are recovering from injuries.
Monique Griego has more on the deadly collision and the teens caught in the crossfire.
The suspect crashed into a car full of high school football players on their way home from a game.
Just out of the hospital, the Dunbar High School football players are now recovering after their SUV was hit by a suspect involved in a police pursuit.
"I looked up and I saw the car coming down, zooming down, like balling, and the police was right behind him," Jaquan Hold, a victim of the crash, said.
The crash happened just before midnight on Friday near the intersection of Biddle and Broadway streets in East Baltimore.
Police say the suspect took off after officers tried to pull him over because they thought he was armed.
The six players who were heading home from a Friday night game were stopped at a red light when they saw the suspect's car heading right toward them.
"They were going like 90 plus, had to have been, because if he hit us that hard, spinned our whole truck around, then kept going up a half a block, he had to have been going fast," Kyre Hawkins, a crash victim, said.
After the suspect's vehicle hit the boys' SUV, he kept going and crashed into a tree, killing him and severely injuring a passenger. Police later found a handgun and two replica guns in the vehicle.
For the teens, frightening moments followed the crash when they realized two of their friends were unresponsive.
"We thought they was gone. We thought they was dead. We just kept saying, 'Wake up, please! Just get up!'" Doremain Willet, a victim of the crash, said.
All of the players are now expected to make a full recovery. While they're happy to be alive, they believe the accident should never have happened.
It is against Baltimore City police policy to engage in a chase unless warranted.
"The police are not supposed to be chasing him, and if they wouldn't have been chasing him, he wouldn't have hit us," Hawkins said.
Police are still investigating what led to the chase.
The last of the players was scheduled to be released from the hospital Saturday night.
