By Caren M. Penland
Special to the Star-Telegram
A carjacking victim was shot, a pickup was stolen and wrecked, and a police car and a passing Mustang collided Monday afternoon near the Stockyards before police arrested a man who was wanted on drug-related charges.
After running the stolen pickup into a brick wall, Eddie Wayne Jeffrey, 35, fought with three officers until he was subdued by a shot from a Taser, police said.
Jeffrey was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital with injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening, police said. He will be taken to jail when he is released, said Lt. Dean Sullivan, a police spokesman.
The pursuit began before 3 p.m., when Tarrant County warrant officers spotted a car in the 3600 block of Airport Freeway that matched a description in an arrest warrant in a drug-related case. Deputies followed the car into a parking lot.
“The officers were waiting for him to get out of the car, but he never stopped,” said Terry Grisham, spokesman for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department. “The car then got back onto the freeway.”
The warrant officers’ vehicle was not equipped with rooftop flashing lights, so they could not continue to pursue the car.
At about 300 North Retta Street, the car struck a telephone pole but kept going, a witness later told police.
About 3:10 p.m., a witness told police, a man ran up to a blue Oldsmobile parked in Riverside Park along Oakhurst Scenic Drive. The man shot the owner of the Oldsmobile once in the stomach and took the car. Officers later found the suspect’s car on the embankment above Oakhurst Scenic Drive. He had evidently tried to drive down the slope but was stopped by a tree, they said.
The Oldsmobile’s owner, a man in his 40s, was taken to Harris Methodist Fort Worth hospital in critical condition, police said. His condition was unavailable late Monday.
About a half-hour later, in far north Tarrant County near Alliance Airport, police got a call that a man had tried to carjack a vehicle near Westport Parkway, but the owner resisted and got away.
About 4:15 p.m., a GMC pickup was reported stolen from an apartment complex on Alta Vista Road. At the complex, police found the stolen Oldsmobile.
The police helicopter was sent, but it lost track of the pickup. Officers thought the driver might be heading toward the Oklahoma border on Interstate 35W. They issued a statewide notice for an “armed and dangerous suspect.”
The gang unit was also notified because the suspect was described as having an Aryan Brotherhood tattoo on his torso.
“He disappeared for a while, and then an officer spotted him on North Main Street near the Stockyards,” Sullivan said. “The officer called for backup and began chasing the vehicle.”
Nearby on Northeast 28th Street, an officer responding to the backup call was involved in a collision with a black Ford Mustang.
That wreck, at Northeast 28th and Schwartz streets, littered all four lanes with debris. The Mustang sat in the middle of the intersection; the patrol car slammed into a telephone pole.
Meanwhile, several patrol cars followed the pickup along the south side of the Stockyards and up the east side of Trail Drivers Park. The pickup turned west onto Northeast 28th, but the collision inadvertently served as a blockade, forcing the pickup driver to veer sharply to avoid striking the wrecked vehicles, Sullivan said.
The pickup driver went across an abandoned, overgrown parking lot with uneven foundation slabs that caused him to lose control of the pickup, police said.
It slammed into a brick fence in the 2800 block of Schwartz.
“Three officers immediately approached the wrecked pickup, and he jumped out and began fighting them,” Sullivan said. “They Tasered him once and were able to detain him.”
Officers found a handgun in the pickup, Sullivan said.
Another man in the pickup was detained for questioning. Police are unsure how he was involved, Sullivan said.
He was also taken to JPS Hospital with minor injuries, Sullivan said. The two occupants of the Mustang and the police officer involved in that collision were also taken to JPS, he said. Their conditions could not be learned Monday night.
Jose Adame, who lives two doors from where the pickup crashed, said he heard police sirens approaching and ran outside.
“There are tons of kids in this neighborhood, and I was worried -- they play out here on their bikes all the time,” he said. “But we were lucky. Nobody was in the street. This could have been really bad.”
Sullivan said Jeffrey faces numerous charges, including armed robbery, resisting arrest and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
According to court records, Jeffrey received deferred adjudication for drug-related charges in February, but prosecutors revoked his probation Wednesday and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Staff Writer Anthony Spangler Contributed to This Report.