MILL CREEK — A police chase late Saturday ended in death when the fleeing driver crashed, was ejected from his vehicle and apparently run over by a pursuing patrol car.
The incident began around 11 p.m., when a Mill Creek Police officer caught a vehicle speeding on his radar. He turned on his emergency lights and followed. The vehicle rounded a corner out of sight in the 1800 block of Village Green Drive.
It crashed. As the officer drove up on the scene, he struck something in the roadway.
The driver apparently had been ejected in the crash.
“The officer believes that he may have struck the person lying in the roadway with his vehicle,” said Shari Ireton, a spokeswoman with the Snohomish County Multiple Agency Response Team, or SMART.
Officers attempted to provide first aid, but the driver died at the scene, Ireton said.
Identification of the driver was expected from the Snohomish County medical examiner, as well a determination on the cause and manner of death.
The officer is in his 40s. He has worked for the Mill Creek Police Department for about a year, and has been in law enforcement for more than 10. In keeping with department policies, he was placed on administrative leave.
A stretch of Village Green Drive was closed while SMART investigated.
SMART is a task force of detectives from various law enforcement agencies throughout the county who investigate police use of force.
Saturday night’s events marked the second time in a week that a police chase in south Snohomish County ended with pursuing officers involved in a crash. On Wednesday, a sheriff’s deputy was injured and three patrol cars damaged. That chase began near Mill Creek when the suspect allegedly attempted to ram a deputy’s patrol car. It ended with deputies deliberately colliding with the fleeing driver’s vehicle in a controlled effort to cause it to spin out and stall.
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