Police have released the identities of the two men seriously injured in Monday afternoon’s accident at 25th Street and Ohio Boulevard.
Richard Hoke, 35, of Terre Haute, and Harold Travioli, 60, of Clinton were flown by helicopter to an Indianapolis hospital, according to Sgt. Matt Ames of Indiana State Police.
The status of both individuals on Tuesday was not known to ISP, Ames said.
The Terre Haute Police Department asked ISP to do the crash investigation, including a full accident reconstruction.
Troopers are not investigating the propriety of the THPD police chase that preceded the crash, Ames said. Whether the chase followed THPD protocols would be a matter for THPD.
Chief Shawn Keen of the THPD spoke to that question in an email Tuesday:
“The policies and procedures for pursuits provide that each officer considers conditions such as ‘the violation the person is known to have committed, imminent danger to the public based on the totality of circumstances, and potential danger if the violator is not apprehended immediately,'” Keen wrote.
“The policy also requires that those factors are continually evaluated throughout the duration of the pursuit. The shift supervisors are also required to monitor the pursuit for these factors and determine if a pursuit or the continuation of a pursuit is justified and order the termination of the pursuit if it is not,” Keen wrote.
“At this stage in the investigation, it would be inappropriate to speculate on all the factors that this officer could have observed while determining to pursue. However, In this case and based on the observations described by the officer during the approximately 2 minutes this pursuit lasted, the suspect’s driving behavior had already placed the public in danger prior to the initiation of the pursuit, and his identity had not been established during those 2 minutes,” Keen said.
Police on Monday said Hoke was traveling west on Ohio Boulevard in a Chrysler van at a high rate of speed and disregarded the red light at the intersection, according to state police.
Hoke’s van then struck a Ford pickup truck on the passenger side; Travioli was the driver of the pickup truck.
The accident, which happened around 1 p.m., occurred while the van was being pursued by a city police officer dispatched to check out a domestic custody dispute call.
Police said that officer heard a woman yelling “stop” and saw the minivan traveling east in the alley south of Dean Avenue and west of 29th Street.
The van was traveling at high speed through the alley and turned north on 29th Street in front of the officer.
That officer saw the van fail to stop at multiple stops signs on 29th Street and recklessly pass other vehicles, THPD said in a news release.
The officer activated his emergency lights and siren and attempted to stop the vehicle as it traveled from College Avenue onto Brown Avenue, and then west onto Ohio Boulevard.
The vehicle failed to stop and continued to speed westbound ignoring a red light at 25th Street.
The minivan hit the pickup truck that was northbound on 25th.
City police said a canvas of the 2800 block of Dean Avenue located the original female heard by the officer. She was yelling because she was upset with the male driver for driving recklessly with her child in the car, police said.