According to a report by the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team, “The damage to the Toyota Corolla was too extensive to describe all the damage.” It seems almost impossible that two people survived. In one of the police dashcam videos that shows the crash, pieces of the car fly dozens of feet in the air toward the camera. The car looked flattened, like a tank had ridden over it. The crash was so violent that the car’s roof was ripped completely off. Morton, whom I was not able to interview for this article, must have been stunned to be alive and relatively unharmed. “He was kind of just looking around … I will never forget it. “He was still in the back seat,” Saddler said. In court, Trooper Saddler described seeing Morton at the scene. That Tuesday, however, he had two friends as passengers, 20-year-old Relpheal Morton and 19-year-old Marion Shore.
He was driving with a suspended license - and some counterfeit currency was later found in the wreckage - but his most serious offense was running from the police. Photo: Courtesy of Calhoun familyIf Calhoun had been alone in the car, he might have received little or no prison time, as he had with all his previous arrests for minor crimes. Calhoun was completely ejected from the car and sustained major injuries, but somehow survived. Saddler pulled his car alongside Calhoun’s and performed, at 111 mph, what is called a Precision Immobilization Technique, or PIT maneuver, making contact with the back of Calhoun’s car and causing it to spin clockwise and careen off the side of the highway across the rumble strips and into a small embankment, eventually striking a tree. Police officers from Banks County, Franklin County, and eventually the Georgia State Patrol chased him at speeds exceeding 120 mph, with Calhoun and his pursuers weaving around cars on the highway.Īt 2:03 p.m., after 14 minutes and 21 miles of pursuit, Trooper Donnie O’Neal Saddler decided that Calhoun had to be stopped to protect the lives of innocent people on the highway. Calhoun decided to hit the gas instead of the brakes and make a run for it, as he had so many times in the past. On that Tuesday afternoon, Calhoun, who was born and raised in Henry County, Georgia, was caught speeding on I-85, heading north, when a Banks County sheriff’s deputy put on his lights to pull the gray Toyota Corolla over for a traffic stop. Then, 11 days later, he ran from the cops for the very last time. The next year he fled and was arrested again. In 2010, he fled from police in Georgia twice and was arrested for it each time. T HANQUARIUS CALHOUN liked to run from cops.
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