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Mom Turns In Teenage Son After He Lead Cops On Low-Speed Chase In Stolen City Bus
The miscreant minor suspect made a gas-guzzling getaway from the cops — but mom turned him in.
You can run from the cops, but not from your mom.
An Alabama teen led police on a chase down residential Birmingham streets in a stolen bus, slamming into two police cars during his gas-guzzling getaway. Hours later, his mom marched him to a precinct to turn himself in.
The trouble in the Magic City began at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday, when police responded to reports of people with guns in the neighborhood of Lakeview, and found the suspect and a fellow 15-year-old toting a BB gun and a paintball gun, Lt. Peter Williston of the Birmingham police told Oxygen.com.
Unable to contact family members of the kids, police took them to a juvenile detention facility to hold them. During intake, the speed-demon teen tore off from his minders around 6:30 a.m., and disappeared, police said.
About half an hour later, he jimmied his way into a bus belonging to the city’s Metro Area Express system, or MAX, at the MAX central depot, and made off with the vehicle, according to Williston.
A short time later, officers noticed the teen careening down the streets of a residential neighborhood and attempted to stop him, police said. Rather than stopping, the teen proceeded to lead cops on a “low speed chase,” Williston said, ramming several police cruisers in his attempt to flee.
“He was just kind of driving around in circles in the neighborhood where the officers saw him,” Williston told Oxygen.com. “It was early in the morning, but that’s still dangerous.”
A video of a portion of the chase, captured by a bystander, shows a small MAX bus cruising down a residential street before taking a hair-raising turn, briefly wobbling on its axles, and continuing on with at least three cop cars in not-so-hot pursuit, sirens blaring.
Due to the potential danger to officers, the teen, and anyone in his path, police gave up the chase. The suspect managed to ditch the bus and make a getaway, according to police.
He didn’t stay gone for long. At about 2 p.m., the teen — accompanied by his mother — surrendered to cops. He is in custody at a city juvenile detention center facing charges that police have not yet made public, Williston said.
In a statement to WVTM Birmingham, Williston praised the officers for showing “great restraint” in their pursuit of the young busjacker.
"The officers used all available resources to safely end this incident,” Williston told the news station. “The juvenile suspect took a minor situation to a level that put many lives in danger; to include his own.”
[Photo: Facebook / Wandalyn Elliott]
