The result of drinking and driving.

This is my first post so bear with me, Tiff does a great job, but I thought I could give her a break and add something every so often.

Anyway, I had just finished typing up some normal boring reports and had a few hours left of my shift, so I thought I might go try to stir something up. Little did I know that things would take care of themselves. I headed out from the station and started patrolling the main highway running through the valley. After about ten minutes of finding nothing, I received an ATL (Attempt to locate) on the radio for a reckless driver. Since this is Nevada when we are talking about a reckless driver that most likely means a drunk driver. The car was described as driving at 95+ miles per hour and running stop lights without even attempting to slow down or stop. Luckily I was actually ahead of the vehicle, so I stopped in a dark area, blacked out my vehicle, and waited for it to pass.

As the vehicle passed I noticed it was actually driving about a foot off the road and still at 85+. So I left my dark spot and lit up every light I had to pull the vehicle over. The vehicle started to slow down very slowly, it took almost a mile for the car to actually pull over and stop. Even this length of time points to the fact that the driver is probably drunk. I approached the car and saw a drunk mess sitting in the driver seat. I ordered the guy to turn the car off, take out the keys and give them to me. The guy turned off the car but couldn't get the keys out because he still hadn't computed that he needed to put the car in park. I told him to put it in park and he simply stated, "Uggghhh." I think he was too drunk to actually form a real word. Well instead of listening to me the guy restarted his car and decided it was better for him to pull away from me. So the pursuit was on.

I ran back to my car and let all my partners know what had just happened. I put the pedal down and started after him. The guy shortly exited the highway to go into a residential area, I think he was trying to get home before I could actually arrest him. Well he started to drive up a hill and kept the pedal down the whole time, but he was too drunk to remember that at the top of the hill is a stop sign and right after that a sharp left turn. Due to his speed while going up the hill, which I estimated to be almost 70 in a 25, I knew he was not going to be able to stop or make the turn. Bad news for him. I started to back off so that I wouldn't be involved. He decided that he didn't even need to put the brakes on. The front right corner of his car then slammed into a parked SUV. The impact was so hard that it actually pushed the SUV about 45 yards further down the road before it hit another pickup and finally stopped.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story, other than the simple detail that of course this guy was not wearing a seatbelt and he got a lovely helicopter ride to the hospital.