Stolen Cop Car Crashed Into Church

“Open the door,” a 49-year-old man shouted at a police officer sitting in the passenger side of a parked cruiser on Congress Avenue.

The man said he was being followed. He told the officer to get out of the car.

The officer unlocked the vehicle, tried to radio for help, and the man got in — and started driving.

That police car theft took place Sunday at around 10:43 p.m. outside the police substation at Congress Avenue and Hallock Street in the Hill.

Within seconds of the theft, the car crashed into a nearby church. Police subsequently arrested the man for four felonies and a misdemeanor, ranging from second-degree larceny and second-degree kidnapping to interfering with an officer. He has not yet entered a plea to any of the charges, and is being held on a $300,000 bond.

Police Chief Karl Jacobson told the Independent that the man has been arrested dozens of times over the past few decades. The state court’s online criminal database shows that he has nine prior convictions, for charges ranging from breach of peace and disorderly conduct to third-degree assault and third-degree burglary.

Jacobson pointed out that the man was found in the stolen cop car with an apparent crack pipe in one hand. Dashboard video from that same car also records him shouting ​“Shoot” at the officer next to him after the crash.

“This is yet another example of the inherent risks that police officers face daily and even when sitting in a cruiser you are marked for violence due to your job,” Jacobson is quoted as saying in a Monday press release. ​“To have a dangerous individual attempt to kidnap an officer and steal a marked police car is outrageous. The suspect then attempts to be in a suicide by police officer scenario and the officers deal with this taking him into custody.” He expressed gratitude that no one was seriously injured over the course of this incident.

According to an arrest report filed on Sunday by Officer Ramon Miguel Rios, and according to dashboard and surveillance camera footage provided by city police spokesperson Officer Christian Bruckhart, a man in a white shirt and dark shorts walked up to the driver’s side of a cruiser that was parked on the sidewalk with its lights on outside of the police substation. He started knocking on the car’s window.

Officer Carlo Roch was sitting in the front passenger side, writing an incident report, as Rios was inside the substation building.

Roch later told Rios that the man shouted ​“open the door,” ​“come out,” and ​“they are was following me.”

Roch told Rios that he tried to contact Rios via his portable radio, only to realize that it was not turned on. At the same time, he unlocked the door of the cruiser to try to talk with the man knocking on its window.

That’s when the man ​“opened the driver side door and pushed his body in while Officer Roch was attempting to push him out of the vehicle,” Rios wrote.

While in the driver seat, Rios continued, the man ​“proceeded to grab the shifter and place the vehicle in drive while accelerating at a high rate of speed towards John C. Daniels School” right across the street on Congress Avenue.

From the passenger’s side, Roch grabbed the steering wheel and turned the car east. The man behind the wheel turned the vehicle ​“hard to the right,” running over a street sign and crashing into the adjacent church, Deliverance Temple Pentecostal, at 584 Congress Ave.

After the crash, the dashboard video from inside the car records the driver as shouting at Roch, ​“Get your gun out! Get your gun out! Shoot!” No shots were fired.

Rios exited the substation right as the crash was taking place. He recalled hearing ​“a loud crashing sound,” and saw his cruiser had crashed into the church. He saw Roch ​“stumbling out of the car stating in an incoherent manner that someone was currently inside of the vehicle.”

Rios approached the cruiser with his police-issued firearm drawn. He wrote that he wasn’t sure whether or not the man who had just stolen the cop car ​“was armed with a dangerous weapon.”

Rios opened the front passenger door, and found the man still behind the wheel. He said the driver was ​“screaming what I believed to be ​‘Alluah Akbar.’ ” Rios told the man not to move, and called for help via his portable radio.

That’s when he saw in the man’s right hand ​“a glass cylindrical object … with a burnt end consistent with what I have encountered previously as paraphernalia to be used in smoking or ingesting crack cocaine.”

He wrote that the man tried to exit the vehicle through the passenger side ​“while screaming incoherently and beginning to act aggressively by yelling and swearing in an incoherent manner.” Rios proceeded to punch the man ​“with a closed right hand in order to gain compliance” as the man was not responding to the officer’s commands and Rios could not see if he was holding anything in his left hand.

Fellow officers arrived to support, and Rios put his gun away. Officers were able to remove the man from the driver’s side of the car and put him in handcuffs.

The cruiser sustained ​“heavy frontend damage, with smoke emanating from under the hood of the vehicle and the airbags deployed.”

Roch was transported to Yale New Haven Hospital for evaluation. A CT scan showed that he suffered a ​“hematoma to the left front side of his head” and ​“had a minor bleed behind the skull.” The officer did not break any bones during the incident.

A review of outstanding warrants showed that the man currently has two ​“prawn warrants” in New Haven — both for failing to appear for other criminal cases.

Police subsequently charged the man with second-degree larceny, second-degree kidnapping, assault of a public safety officer, second-degree criminal ​“trover,” and interfering with an officer.