HURON TOWNSHIP, Mich. – A high-speed chase involving an armed suspect in Huron Township ended Wednesday when officers cornered the vehicle at a landfill and took the driver into custody.
Huron Township officers joined Taylor police in following a 54-year-old woman wanted for fleeing and eluding. The pursuit began on Hannan Road and at times reached speeds of 90 to 100 mph, according to Huron Township police Chief Everette Robbins.
Taylor police Chief John Blair told Local 4 the driver was wanted in connection to three separate police chases in Taylor, one in Trenton, and said she had made more than two dozen 911 calls threatening officers.
In one call, Robbins said she could be heard racking a gun.
“I want to get to know everything about her so that I can have all that information for them,” said dispatcher Corrina Schear, who was involved in the chase. “Does she have firearms in her name? Could there possibly be guns, or was she just making this statement without actually having something on her?”
Officers temporarily called off the chase for public-safety reasons but continued to follow the vehicle.
At one point, the driver drove through a backyard on Ash Road, smashed through a fence, and continued on.
David Dyl said his 20-year-old son watched the woman drive through the fence, narrowly missing officers.
“He said there’s 10 police guys out here chasing a car with guns out, and she turned around in the backyard over there and took the fence out,” Dyl said.
Huron Township police released dash-cam video showing the moments she drove through the backyard, ignoring officers’ commands to get out of the car.
“I pulled my vehicle in the front yard to try to stop her, and that’s when she came head-on at me through the fence,” said officer Adam Sheehan.
“When she started going head-on with us, with her vehicle, and understanding that mindset of, this isn’t just someone who’s possessing a weapon, this is someone that is in the mindset of using it and is capable of using that vehicle as a weapon as well,” said officer Adrian Ljaljevic.
The chase ended at the Carleton Farms Landfill, where the woman drove up and down a trash hill, again narrowly missing police cruisers.
Landfill workers helped block the car, and officers broke a window and removed the woman from the vehicle.
Police recovered nine guns from the car, including several handguns and rifles, some of them loaded.
Police have sent a charging request to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office for multiple felony charges.