A Trip To The Post Office Finds A Fort Worth Police Officer Critically Injured In Chase

I left here about 3, this afternoon, heading to the library and post office. As soon as I had a view of the horizon I saw helicopters hovering over the freeway.

By the time I got to the library I could see traffic eastbound on Interstate 30 was not moving.

I was at the library all of a minute. As I left Miss Puerto Rico called to tell me she'd never seen so many police cars. She was over by Taco Bueno. Which is by the post office.

Driving past Taco Bueno, on Handley Road, I saw two police cars blocking entry to the freeway. Handley makes a bend past the post office. Around the bend I saw where the trouble was. Cars were backed up on Handley at the site of the problem.

As I joined the traffic jam I got out my camera and turned it on. The police cruiser you see in the picture came into view.

The car looked bent, as if it'd wrapped around the tree that appears to be coming out of the car.

This was the end result of a high speed chase that began in Mansfield. The Tarrant County Sheriff's Department had a house under surveillance due to it being a suspected Meth Lab House.

A couple of motorcylists left the house. The police began their pursuit. Fort Worth police were asked to join the chase, after which the crash occurred, just a short distance east of the I-30/I-820 Mixmaster Exchange.

The police officer was critically injured in the accident when his car slammed into the tree you see in the picture.

I have long been of the opinion that police chases of this sort should only be allowed for the most serious and dangerous of crimes. The police and public should not have been in this type danger chasing suspected drug dealers on motorbikes.

In my opinion.

No word yet if the police caught the motorcyclists they were chasing.

Watching A Dallas Cop Car Chase During Lunch

I turned on the TV during lunch to check in on the news to see that the news on all the cable news channels was a car chase in my neighborhood of the world.

I've watched a few of these live police chases in the past. I remember one in the LA zone that ended sort of anti-climatically on a dirt road.

And then there was another Dallas one where the police had flattened the chasee's tires, but she kept on going. That one ended when the woman stopped on a freeway bridge over a lake in east Dallas. I remember thinking, where did she think she was running to? On a lake.

The chase I watched during lunch began with a routine cop stop that quickly spun out of control when narcotics were detected. One of the Dallas TV stations already had a copter in the air, heading to get video of a bunch of dead cows. The copter got diverted from the cows to the cops.

I've never seen one of these cop chases be so wild. The guy trying to escape careened off the freeway, throwing the cops momentarily off his trail. The bad guy zoomed through intersections, flipped U-Turns and finally came to a stoplight where he got past the stopped cars and then was hit on the driver's side by a fast moving truck.

The driver of the truck was not badly injured. His truck was though. The bad guy's car was smacked pretty bad, sort of bent out of shape. The cops had trouble getting inside the car, ended up breaking windows to get the doors open. After about 5 minutes emergency crews arrived and were setting up to help the bad guy when Shepard Smith and FOX News went to commercial.

I decided I'd seen enough and turned off the TV.

Update: As you can see in the photo, the suspect's car was heavily damaged in the crash. Authorities have yet to disclose the suspect's condition. He was brought to an area hospital. I don't know why news reports refer to the driver as a suspect. Is there any doubt he led a large number of police on a dangerous chase?

Update 2: The driver is in critical condition at Baylor University Medical Center. More Details Here.

YouTube video of the chase below....