THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 30, 1994 TAG: 9412300502
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, ALAN FLANDERS AND LARRY BROWN, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Three police officers were injured Thursday night when their vehicles and the car they were pursuing wrecked in the eastbound tube of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
A fast-acting Virginia State Police Trooper brought the chase down Interstate 64 to an abrupt end about 7 p.m. when he blocked the tunnel with his cruiser.
None of the officers was seriously hurt, police said. They were taken to Sentara Hampton General Hospital. Their conditions were not available late Thursday. Four police cars were damaged, however.
Two women who were in the blue Plymouth Laser that police had been chasing were arrested. Neither was hurt.
Details about what sparked the chase were sketchy late Thursday. The driver of the car, whose name was not available, was wanted on an outstanding felony forgery warrant and faces more charges in connection with the chase, police said.
State police said the chase moved onto the interstate at Mercury Boulevard about 7 p.m. Tunnel employees said as many of 13 of the city's police cars were involved in the pursuit.
Trooper Jerome Craig was stopped at a tunnel-maintenance area, fueling his cruiser when he heard about the pursuit on a police radio and then saw the sea of blue and red lights approaching.
``He shot down in there and he closed the roadway,'' said Robert N. Nelson, 55, an emergency crewman for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
When the woman saw the trooper's car blocking her path, she tried to swerve. ``She lost control and hit one of the walls,'' Nelson said. The back end of her car was crushed against a tunnel wall.
The Hampton police cars raced to a stop - some colliding - behind her.
As the woman, who was in handcuffs, was being loaded into a Hampton police car, several tunnel workers said they overheard her asking an officer: ``Am I in trouble?''
The wreck closed the eastbound lanes for about 90 minutes. About a dozen civilian cars had to be backed out of the tunnel so wreckers could remove the damaged cars.
Amazingly, no civilian cars got sandwiched between the chase and the state police car. Motorists apparently gave wide berth to the police. ``These people saw all these lights and heard all these sirens and they all started backing off,'' Nelson said.
Witnesses said it all looked like something out of a movie.
``We were going down 64 and saw a car cut in front of us,'' said James Hanrahan of the Ocean View section of Norfolk. Seconds later, they realized why, when the car that was being chased came up on them from behind. ``She swerved out to the side of us,'' he said.
He estimated that the cars were traveling at 70 mph to 90 mph.
``The cops tried stopping everyone from going into the tunnel,'' Hanrahan said. ``And she tried avoiding the roadblock that they had.''
He said the Hampton police cars wrecked when they slid into each other while trying to make the sudden stop at the roadblock.
``They didn't realize they were going too fast to stop,'' Hanrahan said.
Witnesses said the front end of one police car was crushed, apparently from hitting the rear of another police car.
The interstate chase was one of four police chases in Hampton Roads on Thursday.
KEYWORDS: HIGH SPEED CHASES ARREST ACCIDENT
TRAFFIC INJURIES by CNB