How does one stop a stolen oversized front loader that’s plowing down a Georgia highway to escape a police pursuit? With another front loader.
This rather unusual incident, captured on body cam video earlier this week, came about when a 38-year-old former worker at a waste management site in Gwinnett County climbed into the vehicle and began driving it erratically on the site.
Police arrived shortly after and tried to corral the machine, which can apparently accelerate at up to 30 miles per hour. The suspect ignored police commands to stop and drove off the site and into traffic. Police said “movements were unpredictable as he navigated heavy traffic.”
Let’s just note at this point that the front loader weighs about 75,000 pounds.
While one police officer continued the low-speed chase, another returned to the waste site and was able to deputize a second front loader and another driver. Both large machines then engaged in a kind of lumbering dance on the road, bumping into each other, until the pursuing front-loader managed to pick up a corner of the fleeing vehicle and flip it onto its side. The cops rushed in and nabbed the suspect and pinned him face down on the ground. They took him to a hospital, but it sounds like no one was actually hurt.
According to CarScoops, the driver was taken to a hospital for evaluation and then to jail, charged with counts including criminal trespass, theft, reckless driving and eluding police. The charges include property damage, so presumably the loader didn’t come out of being flipped unharmed.