Three young people were killed early Monday when the car they were driving, which had been reported stolen, ran off a ramp while they were being pursued by a Virginia State Police trooper, authorities said.
Around 12:45 a.m., a trooper observed the vehicle on Stevenson Avenue in Alexandria and attempted to make a traffic stop, according to Virginia State Police.
But the driver of the vehicle would not pull over, according to police, and made their way onto Interstate 395 northbound, with the trooper in pursuit.
The chase stretched over “approximately two minutes and … a distance of approximately five miles,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement Monday afternoon.
State troopers deployed spike strips to try to stop the vehicle up ahead, the spokesperson said, but the driver exited at Shirlington Road, before reaching the strips.
The traffic was light, according to police, and the car was traveling “at a high rate of speed.”
“The vehicle lost control on the exit ramp and ran off of the right side of the ramp and into the jersey wall,” state police said.
One of the vehicle’s four occupants, a passenger, died at the scene, police said. The driver and a second passenger died at a hospital. The fourth occupant remained hospitalized with life-threatening injuries as of Monday afternoon, police said.
According to police, none of the occupants were wearing seat belts.
No information has been released about the crash victims, including their ages. The vehicle, according to authorities, was stolen out of Prince George’s County, Maryland. Prince George’s County police referred questions on the vehicle to Virginia State Police.
An automated license plate reader recognized the vehicle and a trooper ran the plates, which confirmed the vehicle was stolen, according to Virginia State Police.
Many law enforcement agencies restrict high-speed chases because of the risks involved, experts said. In June, a food delivery driver on a moped was killed in D.C. during a U.S. Park Police chase of a stolen vehicle.
The Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit police research and policy organization, recommends that departments only engage in police pursuits in cases involving violent crimes.
According to Virginia State Police’s pursuit policy, officers must take several factors into account, including the presence of other vehicles and pedestrians, the “seriousness of the violator’s offense, and its relationship to community safety,” and alternative ways of apprehending the person, such as obtaining a warrant.
State troopers notify supervisors when they are engaged in a pursuit, and both have the authority to stop a pursuit when the potential harm from the pursuit outweighs the potential harm by the person fleeing, according to the policy.
A supervisory review is conducted both during and after a pursuit. According to the agency spokesperson, troopers are “highly trained in pursuit driving, including on factors that would warrant termination of a pursuit.”
But the people being chased aren’t, said Thomas Gleason, a retired police captain and an advisory board member of Pursuit Safety, a nonprofit that seeks to prevent deaths and injuries stemming from police chases.
“We need to think about our actions,” Gleason said. It’s his organization’s view that high-speed pursuits take away from public safety, rather than add to it, he said.
Virginia State Police said no pursuit would take place if a driver stopped their car when law enforcement instructed them to. “Every pursuit that occurs is initiated by the violator,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement.
Liam Scott contributed to this report.
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