A seven-mile California Highway Patrol chase from the Oakland Coliseum to the Uptown District left four people injured and a fire hydrant spewing a geyser Tuesday night, and the chase only ended when the suspect crashed into the hydrant.
There’s been a fair amount of controversy over high-speed police chases in Oakland the last few months, after a late May California Highway Patrol car chase killed an innocent bystander near Lake Merritt. The City of Oakland recently relaxed police restrictions on car chases, but that’s irrelevant to the California Highway Patrol (CHP), who operate on their own set of rules that allow for high-speed chases.
And thus, there was another CHP car chase that injured four people Tuesday night in Oakland, as KTVU reports. The suspects also hit a fire hydrant, which left one corner of the Uptown District flooded with water.
KTVU has video from the scene in the segment above. It’s not clear from their reporting whether this was a “high-speed chase,” but it certainly left a fire hydrant worse for the wear. You can see a geyser of water shooting into the air at Castro and 17th streets, about four blocks east of the Fox Theatre in the Uptown neighborhood.
The chase started near the Coliseum BART station at San Leandro Street at 73rd Avenue, when CHP officers noticed a car without license plates. That made officers suspect the vehicle’s occupants may have been up to no good, and indeed, the vehicle took off when officers approached it.
The chase ended roughly seven miles later, when the suspect vehicle rammed into the fire hydrant in the Uptown District.
Four people were injured, according to the Oakland Fire Department, though the injuries were described as minor. It’s currently unclear whether the two people in the suspect vehicle were among those injured.
With the injuries not severe and the damage mostly just being to the fire hydrant and the suspect vehicle, this chase may not change the conversation much around high-speed pursuits. It may be more significant that two people were killed in a CHP chase in San Leandro on Saturday morning of this past weekend, though in that case, the two people killed were the suspects being chased.
Image via Citizen app
