Watch Conn. Police Nab Man in Carjacked Vehicle after Chase, Wrong-Way Crash

By Peter Yankowski

Source Connecticut Post, Bridgeport

The call in Wilton starts innocuously enough.

Behind the wheel of his cruiser, a local police officer pulls into a driveway on Sturges Ridge Road. His body-camera footage is silent at first, but a ticker in the upper left corner says the date and time — just before 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 3.

The officer gets out of the car, covering his head with a baseball cap, and the video's sound clicks on. His body language and tone are friendly as he walks up to the driver's window of a gray Mazda sedan.

"What's up with the license plate on this car?" he asks the young man behind the wheel, who's wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.

"What happened?" the driver responds.

"The plate's not coming back to this car, that's the problem," the officer tells him. "Does it belong to somebody else, did you buy the car?"

"It's my mom's," the driver can be heard mumbling in response.

The officer leans over to look at the back of the car, the rear plate briefly visible in the frame.

"All right, where's your mom live?" the officer begins to ask him.

But the driver begins turning the wheel and the car creeps forward.

"Hey, get back here," the officer says, then yelling "Hey, get back here!"

But the car with the mystery plate keeps going as the officer runs behind it. Making a left, the driver sideswipes the front bumper of the police cruiser, then the back panel or bumper, the video shows. With a skitter from the tires, the car disappears, headed down Sturges Ridge Road.

The roughly 30-second encounter that morning in Wilton touched off a chaotic chase through southwestern Connecticut that saw the car crashing after it got on the Merritt Parkway going the wrong way. One of the occupants was quickly apprehended, but the driver remained at large after running from the scene.

Police from multiple agencies responded and conducted a large search with K-9s, checking sheds and other spots the driver could have been hiding. He eventually was apprehended after police say he turned up in a car outside a police station trying to bail out his accomplice.

In a summary of the Wilton traffic stop, police said the officer had pulled over the gray 2012 Mazda 3 sedan on Sturges Ridge Road after the driver failed to stop for a stop sign. The car had no front license plate, the summary said, and a check of the back plate revealed it was registered to a Nissan — not the Mazda.

"It was later learned that both the vehicle and the plate were stolen during an armed carjacking with a firearm earlier in the day in Bridgeport," the summary from Wilton police said.

After fleeing from the Wilton police officer, the summary said the driver "proceeded to drive south on Sturges Ridge Road at a high rate of speed."

Fairfield police spotted the stolen Mazda heading north on the Merritt Parkway shortly after 9:40 a.m., minutes after it had fled the scene in Wilton, the department said in a news release.

Dash cam footage from a pursuing Fairfield police cruiser captured the officer pursuing the stolen car at a high rate of speed up the Merritt Parkway at times cutting quickly across lanes.

When they come up on Exit 48, the Mazda swerved over from the left lane at the last minute, cutting over the white lines, the footage shows. The pursuing cruiser followed as the stolen car made a right through a red light, weaving and making a sudden U-turn on side streets, the footage shows. The Mazda got back on the Merritt heading north with traffic, at times cutting over into the breakdown lane to weave around other cars, the dash footage shows.

At Exit 51, the car got off the Merritt again, the footage shows, with the Fairfield cruiser still in pursuit. The driver went straight through a red light, narrowly cutting past stopped traffic, and turned around in a Department of Transportation lot, where the car narrowly dodged being boxed in by the cruiser, the footage shows.

The police incident report noted police set up "tire deflation devices" at the exit to the DOT property, but the driver of the stolen car avoided them.

The video shows the cruiser then pursuing the stolen Mazda back up the Exit 51 ramp. The report states the car began driving the wrong-way down the ramp and "attempted to make a U-turn" and enter the Merritt northbound. But the car collided with another vehicle, causing "heavy front end damage" to the Mazda, which disabled the stolen car, according to the report.

The police dash cam video captures the officer running across the highway with his police K-9 shortly before the video ends.

The report said the car collided with a Chevrolet Suburban SUV carrying a family of five that included two children, ages 2 and 4.

"Although involved in a serious motor vehicle accident that placed all occupants in a potentially life threatening situation, the family sustained no apparent injuries and refused ambulance transport," the report said.

Following the crash, the two occupants of the Mazda ran across the southbound lanes of Route 15 and into the wooded area "adjacent to the highway," the report said.

Body camera footage from the pursuing officer picks up with him springing his K-9 from the back of his police pickup truck, running across the southbound side of the Merritt as drivers come to a standstill. They run into the woodline, and the video's audio comes on.

The officer and police dog corner one of the suspects in the woods and ordered him to the ground, the video shows. Another officer then approached and took the person into custody.

The man, 21-year Elijah Holloman, told police he was the passenger in the Mazda and didn't know where the driver had gone, according to the report. A witness to the crash on the Merritt, who also was involved in the collision, described the second male suspect as tall and skinny, wearing dark clothing, the report said.

Police used the dog to track from where Holloman was found, leading them to a residential area near Partridge Lane in Trumbull, the report said. Police found a pair of Nike sandals in the brush near Partridge Lane, but further attempts to track the remaining suspect by the Fairfield K-9 unit and a state police K-9 team were unsuccessful, according to the report.

The hunt for the remaining suspect then appears to have turned into a large-scale search.

In a news release, Fairfield police said "Telecommunicators, officers, and detectives from Fairfield, Trumbull, Bridgeport, Wilton, Westport, Connecticut State Police (CSP), CSP Auto Theft Task Force, and area K-9 units established communication, perimeters, and an investigation" to find the suspect still at large.

Body cam footage from Trumbull officers involved in the canvass showed police trudging through the woods and, at one point, checking inside a shed as a potential hiding spot.

Police also can be heard remarking that the suspect is barefoot, and that he inadvertently grabbed Holloman's phone out of the car as the pair fled.

The Fairfield police report said an officer also located a "large amount" of forged checks in the center console of the stolen car, most of which had Fairfield addresses. Police photographed the checks and ran the vehicle identification number of the car, which showed it had been entered as stolen and should be held for prints, the report said. Bridgeport police later took the car as evidence, according to the report.

Portions of the report obtained by CT Insider were redacted, but at some point Holloman's father showed up at the Trumbull Police Department looking for his son, the report said. He was directed to go to Fairfield police as the arresting agency.

The man showed up at the Fairfield Police Department, where police conducted a motor vehicle stop, according to the report. Holloman's father was driving, but one of the other two occupants of the car matched the description of the other suspect in the stolen car chase, the incident report said.

That occupant, identified as Dominque Adrian Reid, was not wearing shoes, the report noted.

The father explained to police that he received a FaceTime call from Reid on his son's phone telling him he was in jail, according to the report. The father told investigators he picked up Reid in Trumbull. He said Reid came out of the bushes near a home and got in the car, according to the report. The father told police Reid told him he had been in a stolen car with Holloman, and that the police had arrested his son, the report said.

Holloman's father told investigators he didn't know Reid, but was "only worried about finding his son," the report said.

Holloman is facing charges of interfering with an officer and larceny of a motor vehicle. He is free on a $25,000 bond.

Reid was charged by Fairfield police with reckless driving, engaging police in pursuit, driving the wrong-way on a one-way street and interfering with an officer. He also is charged with larceny of a motor vehicle and two counts of risk of injury to a child.

Wilton police have charged Reid with reckless driving, disobeying the signal of an officer, evading responsibility, improper use of marker plates, failure to display plates and failure to obey a stop sign.

He remains in custody at Bridgeport Correctional Center in lieu of a $75,000 bond in the case out of Fairfield, records show.

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