THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210363
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HERTFORD LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
A single mystery bullet ended the flight of a speeding white Mustang that catapulted across a ditch and crashed during a police chase Wednesday on busy U.S. Highway 17 between Hertford and Elizabeth City.
Several shots were fired from the fleeing car during the 15-mile chase, but none of the pursuing lawmen was hurt, said Chief Deputy Dean Cartwright of the Perquimans County Sheriff's Department.
When at least a dozen sheriff's deputies, state troopers and Hertford and Elizabeth City police officers reached the wrecked car near the Simpson's Ditch Road intersection with U.S. 17, they found the driver dead with a gunshot wound to his head.
``We don't know whether the gunshot was self-inflicted or not,'' said Line Sergeant Delma G. Dail, commanding officer of Highway Patrol Troop A at Elizabeth City.
Pinned under the right front wheel of the auto was a passenger who apparently was thrown out of the car as it careened across the culvert.
Dail and State Bureau of Investigation agents were checking a gun found in the car to see if it fired the fatal bullet. No investigator would say whether there were powder burns around the head wound, nor would they speculate about who fired the shot.
``We won't get an autopsy report from the medical examiner until Thursday and until then we can't say much about this. One man is dead and we can't talk to him and the other person is in the hospital and we can't talk to him, either, because of his injuries,'' Dail said.
The trapped passenger under the right wheel could not be removed from beneath the car until equipment was brought about four miles from Elizabeth City to lift the wrecked vehicle. The injured man was given IVs while awaiting helicopter transport to Norfolk Sentara Hospital.
``He's a male and he's alive,'' was all a Sentara nurse would say Wednesday night. ``He's stable but we do not have a name.''
Pasquotank County Sheriff Randy Cartwright - who is not related to Dean Cartwright - sent a deputy to the hospital in an effort to identify the injured man.
``We're processing fingerprints and checking on some Norfolk addresses where one or both of the victims may have lived,'' said Randy Cartwright. Police were also trying to trace the white Mustang.
The chase began in the early afternoon when a resident of Holiday Island, an Albemarle Sound community near Bethel in Perquimans County, called the sheriff's office to report what appeared to be a break-in at a nearby home.
``Deputy Ersal Overton spotted a white Mustang on the Harvey Point Road similar to the one reportedly used in the robbery,'' said Chief Deputy Dean Cartwright.
``When our deputy flashed his blue light and attempted to stop the Mustang, the car speeded up and the chase continued up U.S. 17 toward Elizabeth City,'' said the chief deputy.
Ralph Robinson, another Perquimans deputy, joined the pursuit, as did several cars carrying Hertford town policemen. By then the Highway Patrol and Pasquotank County authorities had been alerted.
``Several shots were fired at our vehicles during the chase but none of our officers was injured,'' said Dean Cartwright.
When the pursuit ended at the wreck site near the Simpson Ditch intersection in Pasquotank County, squads of law enforcement agents converged on the scene.
``The Highway Patrol is investigating the accident,'' said Dail. ``The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the gunshot.''
The Pasquotank County Sheriff's Department coordinated the increasingly complicated police work.
By nightfall, Sheriff Cartwright and Perquimans County Sheriff David Lane joined SBI agents in another visit to Holiday Island to look for more fingerprints and other evidence in the house where the intruders were first reported. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by SARAH WEEKS
Police and rescue workers surround a car at the end of a chase in
which the driver died of a gunshot wound and the passenger was
injured.
KEYWORDS: HIGH SPEED CHASE HOT PURSUIT POLICE CHASE ACCIDENT
TRAFFIC by CNB