This just in from the Dallas Police Department:
North Central patrol officer are currently pursuing a stolen Chevy pickup that was taken in a carjacking. That is all the information we have at this time. We will not know anything else until the pursuit ends.KDFW-Channel 4, of course, has the live feed. Last I looked, the truck and the 11 DPD cars chasing it were exiting Pearl off Woodall Rodgers. And they're heading this way.
Update at 3:19 p.m.: They're turning into Love Field. That can't be a good idea. Busted through a gate and is on ... the runway! Prediction: This video will be everywhere.
Update at 3:24 p.m.: Officers -- and a red pickup -- finally boxed in and took down the shirtless suspect on the side of a runway. Said Shaun Rabb: "He's got a one-way ticket now!" Line of the day?
Update at 4 p.m.: On the other side, courtesy CNN, is the end of the chase.
Update at 7:50 p.m.: Also on the other side, the story of how Michael Laurence Browne landed on the Love Field runway.
This evening, Dallas Police Department spokesman Kevin Janse provides us with The Tale of Michael Laurence Browne, the 46-year-old man behind the wheel of the stolen pickup.
Today at 2:30 pm, North Central plain clothes officers observed a silver Chevy Pickup in the 5900 block of Arapaho acting suspicious. They ran the license plate and found the truck to have been stolen yesterday (8/18/10) in Fort Worth during an aggravated robbery. Because the vehicle was taken in a violent felony offense, uniformed officers were called in to perform a felony traffic stop on the truck in the 5700 block of Spring Valley.
The driver refused to stop and at 2:32 pm a pursuit was initiated. Well within department pursuit guidelines, the pursuit made its way up and down Central Expressway, onto Woodall Rogers and over to Harry Hines. At some point, during the pursuit the right rear tire blew out on the suspect vehicle.
The pursuit then made its way onto Love Field Airport property and emergency operating procedures were immediately put into place by Love Field Police Officers and airport personnel. The stolen vehicle drove through a gate and onto the runway with several police vehicles still in pursuit. Air traffic was suspended on that runway. However, there were several plane at the opposite end of the runway that the suspect began driving towards.
Supervisors monitoring the pursuit made the decision to terminate the pursuit by whatever means necessary so as to preserve the safety of the occupants of the planes. Officers were able to strike the suspect vehicle with their police car causing it to spin out and ultimately come to a stop. The suspect was taken into custody shortly after that.
The pursuit ended at 3:24 p.m. with no accidents or injuries reported throughout the entire pursuit and only minimal property damage to the airport fence and the police car. A knife, believed to have been used in the Fort Worth robbery, was recovered in the truck as well as additional property linking the suspect to various other individual robberies in Dallas and other surrounding cities.
Once in custody, the suspect began to complain of discomfort in his chest so he was taken to the hospital as a precaution.
Detectives will now work with Fort Worth PD and the various other departments to try to determine just how many offenses this suspect may have committed over the last several weeks. That number could rise to as many as 10 at this point. Although all major incidents such as this are reviewed to ensure all proper procedures were followed, it appears all the officers involved did an outstanding job to bring a dangerous pursuit to a safe end while getting a violent criminal off the streets.
The suspect is expected to be released from the hospital in the next hour and will then be taken to police headquarters to be interviewed prior to being taken to jail. The exact charges will not be known until detectives finish their initial investigation. More charges could always be filed at a later time.
