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Man runs from cops, spits on paramedic
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Reports said a Mabel Avenue man who managed to elude a police chase for a short while Monday morning taunted officers and also spit on a paramedic.
Timothy Brown, 44, faces charges of driving under suspension, assault, resisting arrest, receiving stolen property, disorderly conduct and failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer. He is being treated at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital after he told paramedics he was ill from “doing $400 worth of cocaine” and has a police hold on him. He is expected to be transferred to the Mahoning County jail when he is discharged from the hospital.
Reports said officers Jacob Short and Kenneth Garling were on patrol about 4:35 a.m. Monday at West Warren and Hillman avenues when they saw a car driving away at high speed. Reports said the pair tried to catch up to the car, but the driver refused to pull over, and the officers started to chase it. The car led police on several South Side streets and onto Interstate 680 north before getting back onto the freeway on the West Side going south. Reports said when speeds hit 98 miles per hour, a supervisor called off the chase.
But police still searched for the car, and one officer found it on Gaither Avenue, so several officers went there.
Reports said there were fresh footprints in the dew, and a records check showed the car was reported stolen out of Cleveland. As police were getting ready to tow the car, an ambulance crew contacted them and told them they were treating a man for chest pains and shortness of breath from taking cocaine at South and Hadnet avenues who matched the description of the driver.
Police drove there and found the man and identified him as Brown, reports said, identifying him as the man who led police on the chase.
As police tried to handcuff him, he resisted, and it took five people to pin him down. Reports said when he was told he was being arrested, he asked how he could be arrested for fleeing if officers could not catch him and why they turned their sirens off and stopped chasing him. At the hospital, reports said he spit on a paramedic, tried to head-butt him and then yelled and screamed in the emergency room. Brown had to be sedated by hospital staff, reports said.