Bruce Schreiner, The Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- A Louisville police officer responding to a possible kidnapping collided with another vehicle and then slammed into a bus stop shelter at a busy intersection Tuesday.
Police said one man was killed and two others, including the police officer, were injured.
The crash occurred shortly before 11 a.m. EDT while the officer was heading to the scene of a possible kidnapping nearby, said police spokesman Dwight Mitchell.
Mitchell said that when the officer reached the intersection he collided with a Ford Explorer that had one person inside. The driver was pronounced dead at the scene, Mitchell said.
A bicyclist was injured as well as the officer. Both were taken to University of Louisville Hospital.
The cause of the crash was under investigation.
The officer was identified as Eugene Fey Jr., who has been on the police department since April 1992, said police spokeswoman Helene Kramer.
Fey has had no disciplinary actions against him in his 11 years on the police force and has received several commendations, she said.
Kramer said police were still investigating whether the cruiser’s lights and siren were on when the crash occurred.
“It will be several days whether we find out definitively what was going on,” Mitchell said.
But two people who were working near the crash scene said they never heard any siren or saw police lights flashing.
Karen Clayton, an employee at a shoe store, said she heard screeching from a car’s brakes and looked out and saw the police car slam into the bus stop shelter.
“I saw the police car up in the air and it landed almost directly on top of the bus stop shelter, Clayton said. “And when he came down, the shelter came down with him.”
Clayton said a man with a bicycle was waiting at the shelter when the police car hit it. The roof of the sport utility vehicle in volved in the wreck was caved in at the intersection a few blocks north of Churchill Downs.
Glass and metal littered the area and a short distance away, the police car straddled the curb and the street.
Clayton said the police car didn’t have lights or sirens on when it crashed. Ann Miller, who works at a nearby drug store, said she was stocking a shelf near the front door when she heard a boom and saw the Explorer flip. She said she also did not hear a siren or see the police lights activated.
Police said Fey was responding to a call for backup in the possible abduction of a child.
Kramer said police made an arrest in that case, just before noon.
The abduction case is being handled by the department’s Crimes Against Children Unit. No other details on that arrest were available.