This might be one of the shortest police chases we’ve seen yet. A man in Florida was riding his motorcycle with a passenger on the back seat when he was stopped by a deputy for speeding. He didn’t have any intention of being arrested, though, with bodycam footage catching him fleeing the scene. But within seconds, the biker noticed that the passenger had already fallen off the vehicle.
Biker returns to the deputy despite knowing he’s about to get arrested
On September 6 at around 10:08 p.m., a deputy flagged down a motorcyclist, later identified as 51-year-old Thomas Wright, for speeding down East College Avenue, as revealed in bodycam footage posted by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office on its official Facebook page.
The deputy is seen stopping the patrol car in front of the motorcycle at an intersection and stepping out while shouting clear commands for the biker.
“Shut it off,” the cop orders, before repeating the command more forcefully.
The deputy approaches the bike, but hears the rider revving the engine in an effort to speed away. The cop attempts to grasp the front of the motorcycle and loses his grip as the biker accelerates through the empty intersection. By the time the deputy regains his footing, the rider was more than several feet away.
This prompts the cop to call in a “10-50, Foxtrot,” which in certain Florida jurisdictions denotes an attempted traffic stop with a vehicle fleeing (in other jurisdictions, it means a traffic crash with a fatality). He turns around and finds the passenger on the bike sitting in the middle of the road after being knocked off and not particularly sure what to do.
Moments later, the rider returns to the scene, circling back after realizing that his bike was much lighter than before. He is ordered to drop to the ground and, after pulling out the motorcycle’s kickstand, lays flat on the road as his hands are placed behind his back and is arrested.
Wright turned what would have been a simple traffic ticket into two felony charges, one for aggravated battery on law enforcement officer with a deadly weapon and another for fleeing and attempting to elude a police officer. The post doesn’t indicate whether the passenger was charged.
Commenters on the story on Facebook were shocked by how calm the deputy was during the incident given the circumstances. One wrote, “That officer could not be more chill after literally getting ran over by the bike. 90% of cops straight tackle him off the bike after he came back…”
Another believed that the passenger falling off was actually a blessing in disguise: “Passenger falling off probably saved both of their lives that night. High speed evasion with 2 people on a bike was definitely going to turn messy.”
