Perhaps in a bid to challenge Vallejo for the title of Most Whack, a Hayward man stands accused of crashing his car last night, and then, while he was being treated on the scene, stealing the police car of a responding officer. But wait, there's more! The Chronicle tells us that the man then reportedly totaled the police car.
This all went down last night around 9:40 p.m. when police say 28-year-old Jeffrey Chambers got into a head-on collision while cruising through town. As firefighters treated Chambers at the scene, a police officer pulled up and got out of the squad car. It was at that time that the injured man allegedly hopped into the police car and took off.
“It’s very strange,” Hayward Police Department spokesperson Sergeant Ryan Cantrell explained to the paper.
Yes. Indeed.
According to The Mercury News, the squad car had been parked with its lights flashing — and engine running — as a warning to other motorists. “All of the lights, sirens and electronics in a patrol vehicle require the batteries to stay charged,” Cantrell told The Mercury News. “In this instance, the officer was using his vehicle and the emergency lights to divert traffic around the collision.”
Police officers, of course, gave chase. Chambers then reportedly drove the car eastbound on Highway 92 before getting into another collision — this time with multiple cars — near the Clawiter Road exit. The car flipped into a ravine, and Chambers was arrested shortly thereafter.
KTVU reports that Chambers had no outstanding warrants and was not suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Maybe he'd just always really wanted to drive a cop car?
