A Georgia man made the mistake of thinking the police was pursuing him and decided to flee at top speed, leading to a hot chase on a highway. Bodycam footage shows a deputy in Coweta County monitoring Interstate 85 on June 3 at around 8:41 a.m. when he caught a gray SUV speeding at 89 mph. But when he starts chasing it, the deputy then clocks another vehicle, a white Ford Focus, hurling past him at 140 mph. Allegedly, the man was trying to escape a guilty conscience.
Driver wasn’t being pursued until he started speeding
The man, later identified as 21-year-old Erick Jerome Chatman from Newnan, is seen attempting to dodge and weave his Ford Focus from lane to lane, as reported by Fox 5 Atlanta. He tries dashing onto the curb as other drivers on the highway pull to the side to maneuver out of the way from the speeding vehicle.
The chase lasted seven minutes as the deputy tried to catch up with Chatman, and it only ended when he successfully rammed the back of the vehicle in a PIT maneuver. This led the driver to stop running away and head over to the shoulder of the highway. The deputy is seen getting out of his patrol car and unfurling his service firearm before the bodycam footage ends.
Chatman allegedly fled in the first place because he had a suspended license. And now because of the high-speed chase, he has been charged not only for driving with a suspended license, but for reckless driving and felony fleeing.
The Coweta County Sheriff’s Office notes that Chatman wouldn’t have been caught if he hadn’t sped away. “Keep in mind, if this driver hadn’t sped up and started driving like this,” the sheriff’s office said, “the deputy was going to pull over a different car.”
Even if he was caught driving with a suspended license, that would only have led to a regular traffic citation.
