Sallisaw police Capt. John Weber turned his patrol vehicle north on Oak Street to cut off a speeding suspect during a high speed chase Saturday, and then drove into the vehicle head-on.
The video taken from a surveillance camera at the nearby police station, and from the body-worn camera from inside the patrol vehicle shows the collision from the officer’s point of view.
Weber has two hands on the steering wheel in the video. He is also heard saying, “I’m gonna ram him if they make it this far.”
Weber had been positioned near Oak Street where the bounce house was just a block away.
“I’m gonna shut it down,” Weber is heard saying on the video as he talks to a dispatcher.
He turns left and accelerates toward the approaching suspect’s car. The camera view from inside the patrol car shows an airbag explode when the vehicles collide. Other law officers and emergency crews arrive immediately.
And two days after his patrol vehicle was in a head-on collision that stopped a fleeing motorist from speeding into a festival bounce house, Weber was able to put on his uniform, despite a broken wrist.
In a news conference Monday at the Sallisaw police headquarters, Weber said there had been stop sticks out that had not worked.
“We had given them every opportunity to pull over,” Weber said.
Monday, police Monday released body-worn camera footage of the moment Weber, the driver, and McGuirt, passenger, stopped the other vehicle that was reaching a speed of 70 mph a block from the bounce house on Oak Street. Weber turned onto Oak and cut them off.
“We made a decision at that moment that it was too close to our crowd,” Weber said. “We did everything we could to allow them to give up and stop the car. However, they didn’t comply. So we had to take action.”
The vehicle chase started near Roland
A Sequoyah County sheriff’s deputy tried to stop a vehicle near Roland on Interstate 40 Saturday afternoon. The driver fled the traffic stop and reached speeds over 100 mph between Sallisaw and Muldrow Saturday, going the wrong way on I-40 at one point, police said.
Carlten Rucker, 33, of Plantation, Florida, the driver, was arrested on complaints of felony eluding of a police officer causing great bodily harm, aggravated assault on a police officer, and transporting an open bottle of liquor.
The report taken by the sheriff’s deputy states a bottle of Cognac was opened and a small bag of green, leafy substance was in the car.
A passenger, 34, in the front seat of the car driven by Rucker, was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital where he was flown by helicopter to a Tulsa hospital.
Courtney Walker, 36, a passenger in the backseat, was arrested in connection with possession of medical marijuana without a license and receiving or possessing stolen property. He refused treatment for injuries at the scene.
In the vehicle was a stolen Arkansas license plate from Fayetteville. A woman’s purse and an empty wallet were both found in the vehicle.