Kan. Police Find Sleeping Baby in Car after Wrong-Way Chase

By Robert A. Cronkleton

Source The Kansas City Star

Police found a baby asleep in an SUV after a suspected drunk driver led officers on a low-speed chase that at times went the wrong-way on U.S. 69 and Interstate 35 in Johnson County.

The baby was unharmed and the driver was taken into custody, according to police radio traffic captured by Broadcastify.

A caller notified police around 12:30 a.m. Monday that there was a white SUV traveling the wrong way on Interstate 435 near Quivira Road.

Overland Park police responded to the area and found the SUV near 109th Street and Quivira Road. When an officer tried contacting the driver, the driver fled northbound on Quivira. When the SUV reached I-435, the driver headed east on the ramp from the westbound lanes of the highway.

“I need units to block the westbound traffic if they can,” the pursuing officer said, according to radio traffic.

Shortly thereafter the officer advised the fleeing SUV was still headed the wrong way and was taking the ramp from southbound Overland Parkway/ U.S. 69. The chase continued north in the southbound lanes of the Overland Parkway/ U.S. 69.

“Somebody get the expressway shut down in Lenexa just off of 75th Street,” the officer requested. “We’re on the left shoulder heading north still.”

Other officers advised they had shut down parts of the highway, although a few vehicles were still headed south on the highway.

“We’re possibly on the phone with the driver of that vehicle and he’s advising that there’s a baby in the vehicle,” a dispatcher said.

The pursuing officer advised that the driver of the SUV swerved toward the police car of another officer deploying stop sticks. An officer advised that it appeared that the passenger-side tires had struck the tire deflating devices, according to the Broadcastify audio.

The chase continued the wrong way onto the southbound lanes of I-35. Although the chase remained under the speed limit, the audio captured officers’ efforts to stop the SUV to prevent a head-on crash.

“Hang back a little bit so we can see the oncoming traffic so if he crashes we’re not involved,” the pursuing officer told a secondary police car involved in the chase.

As the chase reached 73rd Street, speeds had dropped to 35 mph. Officers asked dispatchers to have KC Scout to put warnings up on the highway message boards to alert southbound I-35 traffic of the wrong-way driver.

The pursuit lasted for more than a half-hour and continued north onto Interstate 635, where the driver got into the correct lanes, and into Kansas City, Kansas, before circling back along Interstate 70 and up the 18th Street Expressway.

Eventually, the chase came to an end at 47th Street and South 55th Street, where police advised they had taken the driver into custody and found the infant in a car seat, asleep and unharmed.

A dispatcher advised that they had been in contact with the infant’s grandmother and she was available to pick up the child.

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