Orlando Sentinel
LEESBURG, Fla. — In a rush to help, police Officer John Hollowell steered his police cruiser around a curve on Thomas Road -- and his world suddenly went blank.
He would not fully realize until days after the frightening crash that he had stopped a one-man crime wave.
The high-speed wreck that led to the apprehension and arrest of carjacker James P. Lanier nearly killed Hollowell, 36, who recently returned to duty at the Leesburg Police Department following a seven-month rehabilitation.
“I couldn’t believe I survived it,” Hollowell said Friday. He keeps a photo of the mangled cruiser in his cell phone.
Lanier, 41, who had served six prison stints in the past two decades, had plagued merchants and terrorized customers in Lake County for weeks as he shoplifted and robbed to feed his $500-a-day crack-cocaine habit.
Authorities estimate he was traveling at more than 60 mph when he slammed a stolen sport utility vehicle into Hollowell’s cruiser, a crash that knocked the veteran officer unconscious and injured Brittany Miosky, an officer in training.
The crime sparked outrage among Lake County’s law-enforcement community.
Fruitland Park police Chief J.M. Isom labeled Lanier a “dirtbag” as he listed entries on a rap sheet that was 90 pages long and included repeated probation failures, drug arrests, property crimes and a prior high-speed chase.
Leesburg police Capt. Rob Hicks questioned why Lanier was a free man at the time, considering he previously had been tagged as a habitual offender and had flunked two urinalysis tests in the previous six months.
Probation officers had recommended that Lanier remain in treatment for his cocaine addiction.
Lanier was prowling for an easy mark April 19 when he noticed 75-year-old Leroy Lookadoo sitting in the driver’s seat of a Buick Rendezvous parked in a handicapped spot at Bealls Outlet on North 14th Street.
Prosecutors say he pulled Lookadoo from the vehicle and threw the snowbird from Michigan onto the pavement outside the store. He then fished through Lockadoo’s pockets for money while the elderly man flailed at him.
Lanier then hopped into the SUV and sped away.
According to documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, Lanier told Leesburg detectives that he intended to dump the vehicle in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart but panicked when he saw an approaching police car.
He instead raced south on Thomas Road.
Hollowell and Miosky heard the police broadcast of the pursuit and headed north on Thomas, intending to set up stop sticks that could puncture the Rendezvous’ tires and put an end to a chase that could endanger motorists.
The crash remains a blur to Hollowell.
He was flown to Orlando Regional Medical Center and remained in the hospital for five days. He was required to wear a brace on his right knee and a walking boot on his left foot. One of his toes was shattered in the crash.
Hollowell said he vaguely recalls the aftermath in which a helicopter arrived and attending paramedics and emergency medical technicians repeatedly expressed concern because of a sudden drop in his blood pressure.
“I keep a picture of my kids on my visor,” said Hollowell, a father of two. “I know this may sound cheesy, but I remember looking up at the picture and thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s happening, but whatever it is, I’ve got to suck it up and get through it [for them].’”
He said his friends and colleagues helped his wife, Carla, and children Chase, 6, and Abby, 3, weather the crash. They made meals, offered prayers and comfort, and a neighbor mowed the Hollowells’ lawn all summer long.
Hollowell said his wife, a preschool teacher; was “supportive but nervous” about his return to duty.
“But I always felt as long as I was physically capable that I would come back,” Hollowell said. Danger in the line of duty “is one of the things you kind of accept when you decide to become a law-enforcement officer.”
Earlier purse-snatching
Two days before the carjacking, Lanier snatched the purse of a woman outside a drugstore in Leesburg but managed to elude the store manager and a police dog that chased him to a wooded area near Leesburg High School.
The robbery victim, a waitress with tips in her purse, suspected trouble when Lanier asked for the time.
“Knowing what that means, I realized I was too far [from the store] to go back in,” she told police.
Before he invoked his right to legal counsel, Lanier admitted that he stole from stores in Eustis, Fruitland Park, Lady Lake, Leesburg and Tavares to pay for his drugs but denied any role in a similar carjacking last spring.
Police nonetheless think Lanier also tried in April to carjack a 91-year-old man who fought him off in a department-store parking lot. The victim, however, failed to pick Lanier’s mug shot from a photo array of suspects.
Lanier was sentenced to 26 years in prison last month.
Bill Gladson, division chief in Lake and Sumter counties for the State Attorney’s Office, said prosecutors prepared for a trial by obtaining permission to record testimony from Lookadoo, whose health worsened suddenly during the summer. Instead, Lanier accepted a plea offer that limits the possibility he will ever be released.
Probation officers reviewed
The state Department of Corrections reviewed the performance of both probation officers who had supervised Lanier in the months leading up to his arrest, department spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said..
One officer was cleared by the department, which determined he had “acted appropriately” in recommending another chance for Lanier after a drug test in September 2008 detected traces of cocaine. But the other officer received supervisory counseling because she had failed to review Lanier’s file before submitting her recommendation.
“She did not realize he had previously tested positive,” Pleissinger said in an e-mail response to an inquiry about Lanier’s supervision. “Had she known this, she could have made a different recommendation to the court.”
Copyright 2009 Orlando Sentinel