Two police cars slammed into each another Tuesday night in a southwest Atlanta neighborhood as officers were racing to respond to a call for help.
Home security cameras captured the chaotic wreck, which caused one of the patrol vehicles to flip in the front yard of a home at the intersection of Arthur and Sims streets.
The officers were responding to a robbery in the Pittsburgh neighborhood around 7 p.m., an Atlanta police spokesperson said in a statement. The victim was on the phone with 911 dispatchers while following behind the suspect in a vehicle. He told dispatchers the suspect fired shots at him during the chase, police said.
The crash occurred as officers were trying to converge on the alleged robber. In video footage obtained by Channel 2 Action News, a police SUV and a cruiser went through the intersection at the same time, collided and careened into Milan Johnson’s front yard.
The marked vehicles knocked down a mailbox and a stop sign before the SUV came to a stop feet from her front porch. Johnson told the news station she and her children had just walked inside moments before the crash.
“Soon as we got in the house and I closed the door, we heard a big, loud boom,” Johnson said. “Me and the kids fell on the floor because we didn’t know what it was.”
In the video, the SUV can be seen barreling southbound through the intersection with its lights on. A squad car speeds into frame and slams into the passenger side of the SUV, trapping its driver inside the overturned vehicle.
The officer in the cruiser immediately jumped out of his vehicle and radioed for help before rushing in to help the other officer. Neither was seriously injured, despite significant damage to the vehicles, police said.
Johnson told Channel 2 her surveillance footage showed that the officer driving the SUV ran the stop sign and likely caused the crash. She called the experience “horrifying” and worried she or her children could have been hit.
The department is now investigating the crash, according to a police statement.
Johnson said officers should be more careful in residential neighborhoods.
“They have to take more precautions, especially in this type of four-way intersection, with kids and everything being around,” the woman told the news station.
About the Author
