The crash is so spectacular it looks like a Hollywood stunt ― but escaped inmate Kevonte Austin is facing very real consequences.
Austin, 18, managed to avoid serious injury on Tuesday when the stolen pickup truck he was driving went airborne during a police chase in Dixie Inn, Louisiana, Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton told the Huffington Post.
The truck landed on an occupied car in a parking lot. Miraculously, the woman in the other vehicle was not injured as well.
“We are all surprised it turned out as well as it did,” Sexton said.
Seriously, action movies have nothing on this:
The trouble started when a sheriff’s deputy pulled over the driver of the truck for speeding ― with Austin sitting in the passenger seat. While the driver spoke with the deputy outside the vehicle as a “decoy,” Austin moved behind the wheel and sped off, according to Sexton.
The suspect, who weeks earlier had ditched a work-release program after his shift, then led the law on a 50-mile pursuit at speeds up to 115 miles an hour, running several officers off the road, the sheriff said.
While trying to avoid a roadblock and running over a spike strip, Austin lost control of the truck, the sheriff said. He plunged down, then up a grass divider, hurtling through the air until the pickup plowed into the parked car.
The drama didn’t end there. Austin ran to another occupied car and tried to grab a woman before he was apprehended, the sheriff said. As of Wednesday afternoon, he remained in a Webster Parish jail charged with attempted first-degree murder of a police officer, aggravated flight, attempted car-jacking and possession of a stolen vehicle. He would be transferred to his previous facility in Caddo Parish ― where he was doing time for car theft and a probation violation ― after he was fully processed, Sexton said.
The original driver, 23-year-old Durioki Hawkins, faces charges of harboring a fugitive and possession of a stolen vehicle.
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