Gaston, SC (Paul Kirby) – Gaston police officers successfully spiked the tires of a vehicle that was fleeing from them at high speeds Wednesday morning. The pursuit began about 9:30 a.m. when Major Stephen Watkins ran the tag on a vehicle and it came back registered to another. Watkins began to pursue the speeding SUV near Ben Spires Road and Hwy. 321 south toward Swansea when its driver pulled a U-turn and began travelling north toward Cayce.
Watkins’s Pursuit Charger quickly caught up to the Ford Expedition going through the heart of the town in light traffic. The SUV was still travelling north toward Columbia when the driver turned onto Busbee Road. At one point on Busbee Road, a deputy with the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department deployed his stop sticks but the fleeing driver was able to avoid those.
Several roads over, Gaston Police Chief Mohundro was running parallel to the two speeding cars after vectoring in on them from another direction. The chief was on the upper end of Glenn Road moving quickly toward Fish Hatchery Road. When the fleeing suspect hit Fish Hatchery himself, he steered right toward Pine Ridge and then right again on Glenn where the chief was waiting. He had already deployed his tire deflation spikes. In seconds, the suspect fell right into the chief’s trap hitting the spikes flatting both of his right-side tires. The suspect still tried to escape by backing away on two tires and two rims, but eventually he had to stop after pulling into a church parking lot. There, he was quickly taken into custody.
The driver, James Price Brown, 36, was charged with DUS 1st, failing to stop for a blue light, operating an uninsured vehicle, and reckless driving. Gaston officers also found he was wanted out of Barnwell county for family court bench warrants. He was booked into the Lexington County Detention Center.
