A Pennsylvania man is facing drunken driving charges after he led officers on a low-speed chase on a busy New Jersey road that forced them to run down the car on foot -- all while he was unconscious behind the wheel.
The incident was caught on camera, as an SUV can be seen very slowly rolling down Route 522 in South Brunswick. A 911 caller flagged police to what was described as someone "asleep at the wheel" on Ridge Road, and rookie Officer Justin Samuels was the first to respond to the slow-moving vehicle immediately after.
That began a roughly half-mile chase down the highway. Police did not know if they were dealing with a medical issue, a drunk driver, or something else entirely.
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WATCH HERE"The driver was unresponsive and not listening to any commands. I engaged my emergency equipment, lights and sirens," Samuels said.
Nothing worked to get the driver's attention, or even to wake him up. That's when Samuels jumped out of his patrol car and joined Sgt. William Merkler in a foot chase of the slow-rolling SUV, as the pair walked and jogged alongside the vehicle.
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SIGN UP "Fast-moving situation, right? And we’re making assessments, quick decisions and obviously [the driver] wasn’t responding to emergency lights, sirens and so forth," said Merkler. "Our thought process was, we gotta get access to this car."
After grinding against a guardrail, the vehicle finally came to stop, as another squad car pulled up to block any more forward movement. Soon after, a third officer on foot was able to break the passenger-side glass so that police had access to the driver, who they struggled to get out of the car.
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That driver was identified as 28-year-old Mehul Patel, of Scranton. Patel registered a .29 on a blood test — three and a half times the legal limit — and yet still tried to protest as he was put on a stretcher. He was not hospitalized.
The road was shut down for some time during the ordeal.
"We get a lot of training in the academy, a lot of in-service training, and this is not one of them," Merkler said.
Samuels and Merkler may have written a new course chapter for police training academies with their action. But both are just hoping they don’t have to repeat it again, with the night before Thanksgiving being one of the worst nights of the year for drunk driving.
