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WEST VALLEY CITY — Three men have been arrested after a car chase that started in West Valley and went through Salt Lake City, Cottonwood Heights and ended on I-215.
Lt. Steve Burke, a spokesman for West Valley police, said that a West Valley officer was patrolling at 3:29 a.m. Saturday and “saw three males standing around a car and it appeared that they were trying to steal a car.” The three men were able to get the car mobile, at which point the officer attempted to pull them over. The men in the car “immediately fled from him,” Burke said.
Officers got in a high-speed chase with the car, believing it was a freshly stolen vehicle, Burke said.
The car fled through West Valley and Taylorsville, where it got onto I-215 and went around the belt route. While traveling eastbound the men inside “threw out multiple objects” from the car Burke said. This included a loaded magazine for a .22 caliber handgun, that officers were able to recover.
Burke said that the car got off at Foothill Drive in Salt Lake City, and “went through some of the city streets,” driving back down south to get on I-80 at 13th East. They then exited on State Street and drove through South Sale Lake City and down into Murray.
“They then went southbound on 900 East,” Burke said, going down into Cottonwood Heights, where they got onto 1-215 at Ft. Union Blvd and began traveling westbound.
Burke said that “Just west of State St on I-215,” a Utah Highway Patrol officer was able to spike the tires of the vehicle and it came to a stop at “about 1500 West.” The entire chase had lasted roughly 30 minutes.
At the end of the pursuit officers noticed that the back window had been “shot out,” when it had been intact when the chase began, Burke said. “Sometime during the pursuit, somebody in the car was either shooting at the officers chasing them, or the officers attempting to spike the vehicle.” A witness also said they heard shots fired near 5600 S and 900 East.However, the officers did not find a gun inside the vehicle.
The three men were taken into custody. Police haven't released their identities but said that one of them is a parole fugitive and the two others do have charges against them.
No officers were injured in the chase, but one of the men was suffering from a back injury they had received in an incident not related to the crash, and another “was complaining about some nondescript side pain,” and Burke said they were both transported to a local hospital because of that. Freeman Stevenson is a web producer at KSL.com
