Driver At Large After Crashing Stolen Car, Injuring Passenger
DENVER (CBS4) - Denver police are looking for a driver who ran away after crashing a stolen vehicle on Tuesday morning near Cheesman Park and injuring a passenger.
The dramatic crash took place in the area of East 13th Avenue and Lafayette Street, and three cars in all were damaged.
Police say what started with a call about a man with a gun inside of a gold SUV quickly spiraled into the dangerous wreck.
"As he's travelling on 11th Avenue it comes out as a stolen vehicle. (The officer) puts on his emergency lights to pull him over; the car takes off, so the officer shuts him down so he's not going to pursue him," Sonny Jackson with Denver police said.
The alleged hit-and-run driver crashed into several cars. A woman believed to be with him at the time suffered serious and possibly life-threatening injuries. She was taken to the hospital.
"We got here, we found one female on the ground who had serious bodily injures and suspect fled on foot," Jackson said. "Very vague description, only a black male is all we know at this point because he shed his clothing as he was leaving the area."
Jackson said after crashing, the suspect ran off on foot towards East Colfax Avenue, shedding his clothes in the process and leaving the owners of the other involved cars to make sense of what just happened.
"I spun around and I guess I went flying through that way, hit the stop sign, the tree, and a couple of the cars over there," said Bohnm Johnson, who was involved in the crash.
Cass Whaley's car might have seen the worst of the damage. She was walking to her car less than a block away when the suspect's gold SUV went airborne before toppling onto her car.
"I saw the SUV run through a stop sign and hit oncoming traffic and kind of flew through the air, flipped around, and then landed on my car," Whaley said.
Whaley says she wouldn't have believed if she didn't see it herself, so she took photos of the wreck for her friends -- many of whom thought it was all an April fool's joke.
