Crash, fight and Taser ends Black Country police chase
A dangerous driver sped the wrong way around a busy roundabout hitting another car before grappling with police despite being Tasered in the chest, a court heard.
Lorenzo Brown, of Ripley Grove, Dudley, led the police on a brief high-speed chase along Stourbridge Road.
A police car video showed a BMW driven by Brown crossing the central reservation during the Sunday lunchtime pursuit on January 26 and continuing on the wrong side of the dual carriageway.
But as he then drove the wrong way round the Scotts Green Island, he smashed head-on into a VW Passat, injuring a mother and her two children, one of whom suffered a fractured collarbone.
Brown, aged 27, made off from the scene on foot, and a chasing constable lost sight of him as he chased after him.
The officer’s body-cam captured a member of the public pointing him towards a front garden where Brown could then be seen hiding behind wheelie bins.
Footage played in court showed the officer pointing his Taser at Brown and repeatedly ordering him: “Come to me, come to me.”
Brown emerged and went down onto his knees, but would not comply with an order to lie face-down – until he was Tasered in the chest.
Even after he had been forced to lie face-down, he failed to obey as the officer told him several times: “Put your hands behind your back.”
Eventually the Pc took hold of one of his wrists, at which point Brown got to his feet, and there was a struggle before the officer was thrown to the ground, suffering a serious injury to his shoulder, and Brown ran off.
Judge Peter Cooke said: “
It was a struggle and a fairly brief piece of resistance to being arrested which caused the officer to go to the ground, and he landed in the most unfortunate of fashions and sustained serious injury.
“The other episode, the driving and its most unfortunate consequences, was a bad piece of dangerous driving, even as police pursuits go.
“Crossing onto the opposing carriageway and going the wrong way round a roundabout, two cars written off and a mother and her two children injured, one of them a nine-year-old who received a fractured collarbone.”
Brown, who is now confined to a wheelchair and appeared over a video link from prison because the wheelchair could not be accommodated in the dock at Warwick Crown Court, asked to be given the weekend to decide what to do after speaking to members of his family.
But the judge told him: “I have given you the indication you’ve asked for. You are the one who keeps moving the goalposts. My patience is exhausted.”
Brown then entered guilty pleas to dangerous driving, assault, inflicting grievous bodily harm and driving with no licence or insurance.
Sentencing was adjourned for other matters he faces at Birmingham Crown Court to be transferred, and he was remanded in custody.
