STORM2K

Cross-county chase ends in Flagship standoff

By Carter Thompson
The Daily News

Published July 13, 2004

GALVESTON — A suspected car thief led police on a high-speed chase across the county and back again Monday evening.

The chase ended on top of a bait shop at the end of the Flagship pier, when police shot the suspect with non-lethal weapons. He fell about 25 feet into the Gulf of Mexico and was rescued by lifeguards.

Witnesses said the standoff on the bait shop lasted about 20 minutes. The man at times yelled for police to shoot him and swung at them with a fishing pole. Police tried to talk the man down, officials said, at one point getting him a can of soda.

Texas City police shot him with a Taser gun, designed to deliver an incapacitating shock. When that failed to take him down, Galveston police used shotgun rounds loaded with pepper, also designed to incapacitate without serious injury.

“Once they hit him with that, that was it,” said Kevin Green, an Orange resident who was staying at the Flagship Hotel and saw the standoff.

Willie Clark Johnson Jr., 27, of La Marque was charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, evading with a vehicle and two counts of attempted capital murder. He was being held Monday night in the Texas City jail on bonds totaling $700,000

Dozens of police cruisers played a role in the pursuit, and its end at the Flagship drew hundreds of onlookers.

Tourists and locals crowded on both sides of the Flagship, some with binoculars in hand trying to get a glimpse of the action.

Melissa Hefner, who is vacationing in Galveston this week from East Texas, had her yellow disposable Kodak camera to record the event.

“I was driving down the road and all these cops came by,” Hefner said. “It was scary. I’ve never seen so many cops in my life.”

The crowd cheered as the officers and beach patrol pulled from the suspect from the water and led him in handcuffs toward the throng of flashing police cars blocking the intersection of 25th Street and Seawall Boulevard.

The arrest ended the long chase that at times exceeded 90 mph. Texas City police Sgt. Ross Clements said there were no major injuries or, to his knowledge, other collisions associated with the pursuit.

“I’ve been in a lot of car chases and this was a dangerous one,” Clements said. “But for the level of danger involved, it went well.”

The chase began in Texas City when police spotted an Isuzu Trooper on 25th Avenue North near the Bayou Golf Course that had been reported stolen.

The truck bolted when police tried to pull it over, starting a chase that went south on Amburn Road, west on FM 1765 and then north on Interstate 45,

The truck U-turned on FM 518 in League City, and traveled south on the interstate and its feeder road. Clements said the driver twice swerved in apparent attempts run down police officers deploying a spike strip in an attempt to pop the truck’s tires.

The two attempted capital murder charges stem from those incidents.

Neither the League City nor La Marque police officer was injured.

The Trooper entered Galveston, and traveled the length of Broadway against oncoming traffic.

At the Seawall, the Trooper drove onto Stewart Beach. The truck climbed back onto Seawall Boulevard heading west.

He pulled onto the pier of the Flagship Hotel, drove to the end, where it was trapped.

A second man was being held at the city jail. Police said he was a passenger in the truck and bolted early in the pursuit.