FOREST ACRES, S.C. — A woman is in custody tonight at a local hospital after crashing her car upside down in front of a home with four kids in the vehicle on Tuesday evening. Forest Acres Police Department (FAPD) tells us officers tried to pull over 37-year-old Ashley Baker for suspected shoplifting, but the suspect refused to stop.
FAPD says the officers turned on their lights and siren and followed Baker before the department says she collided with the police vehicle, causing her car to lose control and crash over a brick barrier into a front yard in the 4100 block of Trenholm Road.
On Wednesday, News 19 got an update from FAPD that Baker is in custody at a local hospital and her four children have been released from the hospital.
“I have never seen anything like that before,” Eric Davis lives on Trenholm Road. “I was working and I heard a really loud [noise], so when I looked up, I saw the SUV and the police cruiser just behind it. And they collided. The SUV flipped over the wall here on its roof as it turned out, wheels up. I really thought I had watched someone die. But folks got out of the vehicle. I guess that's a testament to good engineering on that vehicle. But they all survived. I couldn’t believe it. I thought they were goners.”
Davis says he was at home, where his wife Diane was cooking dinner Tuesday evening when he heard that loud noise outside.
“I came running down the stairs. I said, ‘Diane, did you see that?’ she said, ‘See what? No, I didn't see anything,” Davis explained. “So we both came out the front door and watched as things developed for a while. But I have never before, probably will never again see a car flip over like that. It was just incredible, going at a high rate of speed and just wam hit that wall.”
FAPD says officers responded to a call about shoplifting in progress at Trenholm Plaza. An incident report stated the two stores that said they'd had items taken were Bath & Body Works and Sephora.
“That just could of went so much worse,” Sumter resident Vernisha said in the plaza parking lot. “It’s kind of sad that there were four children involved. That’s really shocking, especially in this area.”
When it comes to police pursuits, the South Carolina General Assembly passed Act 218 last year, which requires every law enforcement agency in the state to have a written policy on pursuits.
“This gives the officers a guideline to understand what's expected and how they're expected to handle those type of situations,” South Carolina Fraternal Order of Police President John Blackmon explained. “Every situation is dynamic. But if they have a generalized idea of how the department expects them to handle things, it keeps them out of trouble and it keeps the public….everybody's on the same page.”
Based in Charleston, Blackmon has over 20 years of experience in law enforcement.
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“In those types of situations there is a greater unknown because you don't really know why that person’s fleeing from you,” Blackmon detailed. “Is there a bigger crime involved? There's more danger that we don't know about? Is the person armed or, you know, exactly why are they fleeing? In the Forest Acres casse, it was a simple shoplifting, which is, you know, minor misdemeanor handled here in South Carolina. Why is this woman really running?”
News 19 reached out to FAPD and submitted a Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request to get a copy of its policy. As of this article’s publishing, we have not gotten that document.
When it comes to whether or not police pursuits are necessary, Blackmon says in his opinion, they are.
“We can't just let criminals run free,” Blackmon said. “We've got to have some mechanism to make that arrest. But pursuits are always dangerous for everyone involved. There's always that chance that the car can lose control and careen into another vehicle, a pedestrian, a house or just in itself end up in a ditch and you know, hurt the driver and so, you know, there's so much dangers involved in that. But, you know, each time that these officers are involved in these situations, they have to weigh the risk between the public and everything else. But a lot of times, they'll determine that by, you know, they’ll look at how fast are going, how much traffic's around them. You know, how bad this person is actually driving. Are they doing more than just speeding away? Are they going in other lanes?”
While officers could choose not to pursue a vehicle and instead rely on surveillance video cameras to identify the suspect, Blackmon says that method is not always effective.
“Looking at video cameras, they're not always the best,” Blackmon explained. “They don’t always get best views and so sometimes it's difficult to make an identification.”
You know, we have situations where you might just not be able to identify that driver at a later time. You know, I believe that South Carolina needs to be tough on criminals. We don't need to turn into some of these other states where they just let retail crime, retail theft just run rampant.
South Carolina Highway Patrol (SCHP) has been called in to investigate since the accident involves a Forest Acres Police officer. The department says this review is standard operating procedure to “ensure impartiality and transparency.” News 19 reached out to SCHP, which says as of Wednesday afternoon, there is no new information from the investigation.