Image via Fox10 News/YouTube
A lot of people are amused to see some guy in a stolen skid steer or track loader led police in Mobile, Alabama on a low-speed chase which ended up on the interstate. Believe it or not, we’ve seen this sort of thing before and understand the challenges a suspect in heavy machinery poses to police. Unfortunately, the chase ended in violence.
See what an angry German man did with a stolen excavator.
For reasons that aren’t clear, the unnamed suspect reportedly stole the skid steer and tried using it to hit someone on a surface street in Mobile on January 30. It could’ve been the culmination of an argument or feud, but it might have been a completely random event.
Either way, when police responded, the suspect took off in the stolen vehicle, getting onto I-10, forcing police to halt all westbound traffic. That alone caused a big mess.
Since the skid steer wasn’t fast enough to even begin to outrun police, you can see in the included traffic cam footage he starts driving on the shoulder. When that doesn’t work, he starts driving in circles, lowers the bucket at stopped police cruisers, and threatens to ram them before turning around and heading east in the closed westbound lanes.
Why he thought at that point with dozens of police cars responding he could get away, that’s isn’t clear. After all, he couldn’t exactly leave the cops eating his dust, he was trapped.
Perhaps that’s why he turned around and charged at the cruisers parked down the interstate. The cops did literally back away and our suspect got to feel like a big man. But he might have missed other officers pulling up behind him with rifles ready to go.
That’s how the chase eventually ended, with police shooting the guy to get him to stop after he trashed a police car. He was never going to get away, so instead he decided to try taking some cops out.
Image via Fox10 News/YouTube
