RUSS OATES, The Associated Press
MOUNT JULIET, Tenn. (AP) _ A car fleeing police for several miles crashed Wednesday into two officers laying a spike strip on Interstate 40, killing them and critically injuring the two passengers in the vehicle, authorities said.
The dead were a Wilson County deputy and a Mount Juliet city policeman, said Beth Tucker Womack, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol. The names were not released pending notification of next of kin.
The two officers were trying to use a spike strip to stop a Mercedes-Benz that other law enforcement officers had been chasing for about 30 minutes.
“The car veered to avoid the spike strips and struck the officers and a law enforcement vehicle,” Womack said.
The accident at about 9:50 a.m. ended a chase that began with a report of a reckless vehicle. Officers from three nearby police agencies began pursuit when a check of the license plate indicated the vehicle might have been stolen from East Tennessee.
Two suspects, both female, were taken by helicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which declined to provide information on their condition.
Wilson County Sheriff Terry Ashe said the women, ages 33 and 21, were in critical but stable condition. Their names were not released.
“I hope they survive. I hope we get our day in court,” said Ashe, who expects them to be charged with first-degree murder.
He said the officers properly put the stop sticks down and got off the roadway. “They did it by the book and these people came along and attacked them,” Ashe said during a news conference at the top of the interstate ramp.
Womack and Ashe declined to speculate on the speeds reached during the chase, saying investigators would determine that.
More than 20 emergency vehicles responded to the scene about 25 miles east of Nashville. The crash closed the three westbound lanes of the interstate.
At midday, a Highway Patrol helicopter was flying overhead, and an investigator was measuring distances at the scene with a “traffic wheel.”
Debris was littered across several lanes, including an onramp, and the suspects’ car with a badly damaged front end was on shoulder. Investigators were going through the vehicle’s trunk.
Just before the officers’ bodies were removed, law enforcement authorities on the scene gathered near a fire truck for a brief memorial service.