Houston chase suspect in custody after wild 90-minute pursuit
HOUSTON, Texas -- SWAT officers moved in to arrest a chase suspect on Highway 288 in Houston after a bizarre chase that lasted more than 90 minutes Thursday morning. Officers in tactical gear pulled the man from the SUV. He was taken into custody and placed in an ambulance.
It all started in Baytown as a 911 call for a disturbance at about 7:45 a.m. Baytown police say a man reportedly pistol-whipped a woman. When officers arrived, the man got into the vehicle and took off, with police in pursuit.
Law enforcement agencies pursued the suspect across the east and south sides of Houston, into the Galleria area at one point.
Police say there were reports that the driver had a weapon and a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Just before 8:30 a.m., Houston police bumped the rear of the vehicle in a PIT maneuver along the South Loop.
"We tried to kind of just force him off the road," said B.F. Simen, with the Houston Police Department. "We tried to find a safe place to do that."
The driver pulled over to the shoulder on the South Loop eastbound at Kirby, but the chase didn't end there.
"Time is on our side. We have time," HPD Officer Troy Finner said. "We wanted to just wait it out do what we can, because at the end of the day we want everybody to go home safely."
Police drew their weapons, but the driver didn't fully emerge from the SUV. He put his hands out the window before slowly driving off again, with the door partially open.
After multiple attempts to bring the creeping pursuit to an end, SWAT officers finally boxed in the driver and moved quickly to break the vehicle's windows, pulling the suspect to the ground.
"Sometimes it's not pretty," Finner said. "You don't have a book or something where everything works out like it's printed. This is real life police work and suspect actions dictate sometimes our actions and we do the best we can do."
Once he was taken in custody, police say they found the suspect was not injured, and there was no weapon in the SUV.
"I'm proud that nobody is hurt," Finner said. "We ended it. I want to apologize to our citizens. I know a lot of people when it started your on the way to work and when a chase is this long all over the city it ties up the freeways. But gain, thank you to the support for our citizens."
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