ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604290057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
A ROANOKE COUPLE say their warnings against chases were ignored and that last week's deaths in a crash were predictable.
Bob and Mildred Ferguson were coming home from dinner one night in the fall of 1985 when they came face to face with the reality of high-speed police chases.
A car carrying two men in their 20s came roaring down Roanoke's Memorial Avenue Southwest with a police cruiser in pursuit. The Fergusons say the car swerved into their lane and came within inches of smashing into them.
The chase continued into Roanoke County, over Bent Mountain and almost to the town of Floyd before the two men crashed into a tree and died.
For Bob Ferguson, a former auxiliary police officer in Roanoke, that night convinced him that high-speed chases are too dangerous and that police should avoid them unless they're going after violent felons.
The Fergusons and two other residents complained to City Council.
Council ordered a study of the Police Department's hot-pursuit policy, and City Manager Bob Herbert concluded the policy was correct. Herbert said the city's policy had tighter limits on when and how to chase than many other localities' policies.
Ferguson had hoped area law agencies or the state legislature might put limits on chases, but he says his efforts didn't change anything. He says that was demonstrated a week ago when a Vinton couple and their baby were killed by a speeding driver who had been chased by police.
"We told them back then: Something like this is going to happen if you don't do something about these high-speed chases," Bob Ferguson said Friday. "Is a traffic violation a reason to chase somebody through a residential area, where there are children? You cannot take that chance."
In the 1985 case, police began the chase because the car was being driven recklessly, but found out about halfway through that they were following a stolen car. Roanoke Police Chief M. David Hooper said then that police have "an enforcement obligation" to pursue fleeing felons.
Since then, Western Virginia law agencies have engaged in hundreds of high-speed pursuits. Most end without serious mishap, but some have resulted in serious injury or death.
A few examples of recent chases:
In March, law officers chased a Petersburg man wanted on an attempted murder charge for 20 miles from Bedford County to Roanoke. The chase ended when the driver struck another vehicle. No one was seriously hurt.
A 17-year-old girl died in December after the man she was riding with failed to stop for a state trooper on Interstate 77 in Wythe County. The 21-year-old driver, who was wanted for probation violations in New York, lost control and hit a trailer-tractor head-on.
In May 1995, Blacksburg police pursued a 22-year-old man for 51/2 miles at speeds reaching 80 mph before he pulled over and surrendered. Police said they found a two-foot sword, LSD and other drugs in his truck.
An 18-year-old Roanoker died in 1994 from a crash that ended a chase through Roanoke. Police saw him speeding and weaving through traffic and tried to pull him over. The driver, who had been drinking, sped up. Police pursued him onto Interstate 81 at speeds reaching 85 mph.
A 15-year-old runaway from New York was killed in 1992 when the driver of the van she was in led a Pulaski County deputy on a four-mile chase before running off the road and hitting a tree.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB