
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 25, 1990                   TAG: 9007250392
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B/3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PULASKI TEEN FACES COUNTS IN I-81 CHASE

Sgt. J.T. Whitt thought he was a dead man when he saw the four-wheel-drive vehicle barreling down Interstate 81 at about 115 miles an hour toward the rear of his patrol car.

"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.

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.

James W. Stallings, 17, of Pulaski was 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. In Pulaski County, Stallings also faces a charge of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

Whitt said he will seek an attempted malicious wounding charge in connection with the close call between the vehicle and his patrol car.

by CNB