Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 25, 1990 TAG: 9007250153
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B/1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"It was move or get hit," said the Montgomery County sheriff's deputy.
He moved.
The vehicle buzzed past, just inches from his car door. It also buzzed past another deputy who was driving in front of Whitt.
The two had been trying to set up a moving roadblock to stop the driver of the vehicle, which was equipped with a police radio and had been reported stolen minutes earlier from the home of a Pulaski County Fire Department captain.
Both deputies then joined the chase, which started shortly after midnight Friday in Pulaski County and ended 80 miles and less than an hour later in Rockbridge County.
About a dozen officers and state troopers from eight jurisdictions joined the chase, which weaved through traffic on I-81 as the vehicle tried to run patrol cars off the highway.
One trooper was slightly injured and his patrol car damaged when it collided with the four-wheel-drive as the driver got off I-81 at Exit 51 near Lexington.
The driver got away but was soon stopped by Rockbridge County Sheriff's Deputy T.O. Hickman, who blocked the vehicle at the intersection of Virginia 813 and 684.
James W. Stallings, 17, of Pulaski was arrested by Hickman and charged with driving without a license, drunken driving, reckless driving and eluding an officer.
Stallings faces similar charges in Salem and in Montgomery, Roanoke and Botetourt counties. Juvenile officers have not yet issued petitions in all those jurisdictions. In Pulaski County, Stallings also faces a charge of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
But the most serious charge may be to come.
Whitt said he will seek an attempted malicious wounding charge in connection with the close call he described between the vehicle and his patrol car.
"That was the most dangerous driving I've ever seen in my life," he said. "Every time we got beside him, he'd run us out in the median strip. He ran me in the median strip about three times."
But Whitt admits: "He was a good driver."
Stallings was taken to Stonewall Jackson Hospital in Lexington with neck and back pains he told police he received in the collision with the patrol car. He was later released, a nursing spokeswoman said.
Whitt said that when Stallings was arrested, he asked whether the trooper whose patrol car collided with the four-wheel-drive was hurt.
"He was calm as a cucumber," Whitt said. "He was calmer than I was. I was shaking."
Whitt said the citizens band and police radios in the stolen vehicle apparently helped the driver elude police.
A number of patrol cars were waiting for the vehicle just north of Exit 51, but the driver got off at Exit 51.
The late-model four-wheel-drive belonged to Pulaski Fire Capt. William D. "Sid" Steger and was taken from his family's property in Little Creek, Steger said Tuesday.
Steger said Stallings was an acquaintance, and they had known each other for years.
by CNB