If I remember correctly on the second video with the guy being thrown from the car it happened on I285 coming from GA 400 in atlanta. The guy was being chased by police for something. Here is the article:
Full Text (688 words)
(Copyright, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution - 2002)
When Alpharetta police stopped Damien Lamont Harrington, they were just checking on a minor forgery complaint.
But then Harrington decided to drive away, nearly clipping a detective in the process, according to authorities.
Police say that gave them ample justification to start a high- speed chase --- at times 80 to 90 mph --- that ended in Harrington's death on I-285 Wednesday afternoon.
The crash was the second fatal accident caused by someone fleeing police in metro Atlanta since Sunday. In the earlier chase, two brothers suspected in an armed robbery rammed an SUV at a Fayetteville stop light, killing the driver, Dr. Jason Andrew Trotman, a Union City veterinarian, police said.
On Wednesday, "the pursuit was a product of the action toward the officer. The pursuit was not because of the forgery," said Alpharetta police spokesman Chris Lagerbloom.
Fulton County police are investigating Harrington's death, which occurred as he tried to merge onto I-285 from Ga. 400. The 1999 Lincoln Navigator he was driving flipped across the westbound lanes and jumped the median. Harrington was thrown from the vehicle into eastbound traffic and run over by a passing car, video shot by WSB- TV news helicopter shows.
Lagerbloom said preliminary investigation shows the pursuit was justified under department policy, which forbids chasing suspects wanted for minor offenses. Fulton County police have not yet released their findings.
The chase began several minutes after Harrington, 28, tried to pass a forged check at Red's, a liquor store in Alpharetta, police said.
Harrington had tried to pass five or six other bad checks at the store, owner Jon Wick said. He sought charges, but didn't know the suspect's real name.
"Everything about him was fake," Wick said.
Wick followed Harrington until police arrived to pull him over. At first, Harrington cooperated with police, Lagerbloom said. But when Wick told them the license he gave them was not the same one he tried to write the bad check with, they asked him to step out of the car.
That's when he rolled up the window and drove away. A detective had to jump out of Harrington's way as he drove off, Fulton County police Officer Gary Syblis said.
Harrington struck one vehicle before crashing.
Harrington was wanted on several charges from Maryland, Syblis said, including resisting arrest, drug sales, larceny and failure to appear. Police did not know that when the chase began, Syblis said.
Most Georgia police departments, including Alpharetta, have guidelines forbidding pursuits unless the danger of allowing the suspect to evade capture outweighs the danger of the chase itself, said Frank Rotondo, executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police.
About 400 people a year die in police pursuits, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. About 40 percent of chases end in a crash, said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina sociologist who studies police pursuits. About 1 percent end in death --- most often of the suspect, he said.
Staff writer Don Fernandez contributed to this article.
