It was sad to hear that a homeless man in Berkeley who did a good deed by removing the hose running from a cars tailpipe into the drivers side window had that good deed undone.
It seems that the homeless man then flagged down a Berkeley police officer who attempted to smash the window so that ’the guy in the Subaru’, as he’s referred to in the sflist article, could breathe something other than the “thick fog like cloud of carbon monoxide” for awhile. Well, apparently ‘the guy in the Subaru’ didn’t appreciate a police officer attempting to smash his windows in and pressed his foot on the accelerator and took off.
This of course enticed the police officers, Sargent Patty Delaluna and Amber Phillips, to get into their cars and chase him. I’m not sure what crime ‘the guy in the Subaru’ was guilty of at that point… attempted suicide? I do believe suicide is illegal but is attempted suicide illegal? Or maybe its just the instinctual reaction that all police officers have, when someone runs, they chase. It seems police officers resemble cougars in that regard.
Anyway, chase him they did until he crossed from the “…northbound lanes into the southbound lanes of The Alameda at speeds of at least 80 mph and hit a parked BMW before plowing into a parked Honda.”
It seems the truck went airborne and flipped over, landing on it’s top and killing the suicidal man. So at this point “the guy in the Subaru” is definitely guilty, but we’re not sure what the punishment is for suicide.
Seargent Mary Kusmiss said: “This is one of the most dramatic collisions we’ve seen in a very long time…” We’re trying to get footage as we believe the one of the officers may have been leaning out the window of the police vehicle with her camcorder and filming the entire chase.
But if there must be a moral to the story we would say that driving after inhaling carbon monoxide gas can result in erratic behavior and poor judgement. Also, the “thick fog like cloud of carbon monoxide” could most likely make it hard to see very well. If you’ve ever been to a bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan, you probably have a clue as to what it must have been like. Your eyes burn and water from all the smoke making it hard to see who might be cruising you, not to mention that your clothes wreak when you get home… but I doubt if ‘the guy in the Subaru’ cared about his clothes smelling like exhaust fumes.
We at BerkeleyPC will always wonder what would have happened had the homeless man just pulled the hose out of the tailpipe and kept the police out of it. But of course we’ll never know the answer to that now will we.