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Trooper Marshall waited in the center lane, about 100 feet from the roadblock. Radio transmissions warned that the suspect vehicle was coming in fast. Positioned in the middle of the three-lane road, Marshall saw the SUV run the roadblock and roar down the fast lane -- and he cast the stop stick directly in its path.The SUV swerved onto the left shoulder to avoid the spikes. Next it swerved again back into the left lane. Then it swerved to the right, this time aiming right at Marshall. The trooper dove for his life, as the big black vehicle zoomed past. Then, yanking the stop stick off the road so pursuing squad cars wouldn't run over it, he got behind the wheel and joined the chase.
For almost two hours now, the Baltimore police helicopter, Foxtrot 3, had chased the carjacker, first in the Infiniti and then the Mercedes, back and forth across five counties. With the sky now completely dark, aerial observer Bill Shiflett tracked the car through a thermal imaging system that would allow him to find the suspect by body heat if he bailed out of the SUV as he had the first car.
State Police Trooper 8, another law enforcement helicopter, had joined the pursuit, and TeleAid kept tracking the vehicle by GPS. Dozens of squad cars, lights whirling and sirens wailing, drafted closely behind the Mercedes.
Still, the carjacker raced on: bouncing over medians, darting along shoulders, cutting across grassy sections from highway to highway -- with each move imperiling the lives of the two toddlers he held captive in the back.
Undercover officer Thomas Tippett waited on the median of south-bound I-95 as the black Mercedes SUV drove past. He pulled his Jeep in behind several cruisers as the suspect dashed off the Interstate, onto the beltway, then onto Route 50, headed toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Just before the bridge, he drove over the crossover and headed west.
Trooper Doug Baralo got the call that the pursuit was about a mile from him on Route 50. So he turned his police cruiser around at an exit ramp and soon wove his vehicle in among the other squad cars.
Moments later, traffic slowed. Other cops had set up a roadblock ahead.
With the Mercedes forced to decrease its speed, Tippett saw an opportunity to finally stop this guy. He drove his unmarked Jeep onto the grass of the median between the guardrail and the shoulder, then pulled into the lane in front of the carjacked vehicle.
Baralo raced his police cruiser up the empty right shoulder.
Suddenly, Tippett swerved his Jeep sideways, blocking the SUV's path. The carjacker slammed into the Jeep, pushing it several feet down the asphalt. But Tippett and the other cops had him trapped.
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