A man has been jailed for 15 months after a 50-minute car chase which culminated in being driven off the road by police.
Bruce Dewey, aged 36, was driving a blue Honda on 22 February when police recognised him. Knowing that he only had a provisional license, police began to follow Dewey, but he responded by accelerating, leading to a dangerous car chase through rush hour traffic.
This involved swerving into the oncoming lane to try and evade the police, and driving up onto the curb to get around a lorry that had tried to block the car’s path – and even calling 999 to ask the police to stop chasing him.
The police eventually caught Dewey on the A27 – a major road that runs along the south coast of England – and he was arrested and jailed for dangerous driving.
A police vehicle was totalled after driving into the car and putting it off the road, and two more police cars were also damaged in the process.
Dewey has also been disqualified from driving for three years with a requirement to take an extended driver retest, and was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £100.
PC Peter De Silvo from the Surrey and Sussex Roads Policing Unit said:
“Thankfully, nobody was injured in this incident, which was not conducted at high speed, but Dewey’s actions in trying to avoid police through a busy Monday evening rush hour could have had disastrous consequences.
For nearly 50 minutes he refused to stop for police units, avoided stop sticks deployed to try and burst his tyres, and at one point called 999 and asked us to stop following him!
A video of the incident was captured and was uploaded to YouTube by West Sussex police and can be viewed here.
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