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Marna Plaia strapped her children into their car seats in the back of her Mercedes SUV. On this lovely summer day, the petite 31-year-old mother had taken a golf break while Edie, 18 months, and Paul, 3 years old, enjoyed a day of pampering by their grandparents in Potomac, Maryland. But now it was close to the children's bedtime and they were headed home. Edie had been fussing with a tummy ache and was probably teething too.As she turned left onto River Road, headed for the Capital Beltway, Marna heard the loud chop of a helicopter. A police aircraft hovered ahead, barely clearing the tops of the tall trees.
The stolen late-model green Infiniti had sped along the Capital Beltway at more than 100 mph. It snaked in and out of traffic, and dashed onto the shoulders when cars blocked the lanes. But Baltimore police officer and aerial observer Bill Shiflett kept the car in constant sight from his vantage point in the helicopter.
Shiflett, a 10-year police veteran, and his partner, the chopper pilot, had been tracking the car in their aircraft, Foxtrot 3, for more than a half-hour now. The suspected car thief had escaped a roadblock in the center of the city, and had left the patrol cars in the dust. But he couldn't shake the aerial pursuit.
Now, the Infiniti left the beltway at River Road and headed into a suburban area in Virginia. As the car slowed down, Shiflett tried to alert the state police on the ground, but he couldn't get a signal on the police radio. Then he saw the driver jump from the still-moving Infiniti. Without anyone behind the wheel, the car coasted to the shoulder and stopped, while the suspect ran into the southbound lane of River Road, waving to stop oncoming traffic.
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