Police: Woman in Woonsocket chase has string of recent arrests
WOONSOCKET – The woman at the center of an alleged domestic assault that turned into a dangerous high-speed police chase was ordered held at the state prison as a violator of her probation on a prior conviction for the same charge following an arraignment in District Court yesterday.
The arrest of Regina Rose Morris a day earlier marked the fourth time she’d been arrested since March on charges that include simple assault and domestic assault, according to the judiciary’s web site.
Morris, 19, of 79 Rathbun St., faces a litany of new crim- inal charges after Tuesday’s incident, including four counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, a Hyundai SUV, which she allegedly used as battering ram aimed at police officers. She’s also charged with domestic assault, leaving the scene of an accident involving an injury to a policeman, reckless driving, obstructing police and violating a court order to stay away from her boyfriend, Michael M. Lee, 32.
Lee was also arrested and charged with domestic assault.
According to police reports, the episode began when about 3 p.m. when
Lt. Edward Doura was on routine patrol and he heard a woman yelling from the third floor of a porch on Elm Street, “He’s hitting her.” Doura said he saw Lee behind the wheel of the Hyundai, idling at the sidewalk near Burnside Avenue, repeatedly striking Morris about the head as she sat in the back seat.
Morris later told police officers that she and Lee, with whom she’d just had a child, had been arguing since they left a pizza restaurant on Diamond Hill Road. She told Doura that she was upset because she found a tube of lipstick in the glove compartment of his car that didn’t belong to her.
“She said Lee got in her face in an aggressive manner and started slapping her on top of her head,” Doura’s report says. “She told me that she then punched him in the face several times.”
Lee got out of the car on Doura’s orders and the officer put him in handcuffs. As he did so, Morris allegedly got out of the vehicle and then got back in, behind the wheel.
Doura told her to pull the vehicle over and not to go anywhere. But Morris said “she needed to go” and sped off toward Social Street.
At least a half-dozen marked an unmarked police cars joined the pursuit for the errant motorist.
Patrolman Mathew Labine, who picked up the chase on Social Street, said the Hyundai crossed the state line and traveled into Blackstone and Bellingham. On Pulaski Boulevard, she allegedly whizzed past Denny’s Liquors at 50 mph in a 25 mph zone.
Morris pulled a u-turn in the parking lot of Bellingham Electric and continued traveling southbound toward the city again. When it looked like she was going to get hung up in some clogged traffic, she allegedly veered into the oncoming lane, heading directly toward an unmarked police vehicle in which Detectives David B. Wahl and Philip Kamer were traveling.
Kamer exited his vehicle at that point, apparrently thinking Morris was about to surrender because the Hyundai was slowing down. But Labine said Morris drove up onto the curb and off the road, narrowly missing Kamer as he stood beside the passenger side door of his police car.
That was the first of two brushes with Morris for Kamer and Wahl. As she made her way back to the city via Rathbun Street, the two detectives were still engaged in the pursuit. When she turned left onto George Street, the offi- cers were approaching her from the opposite direction.
Again, the Hyundai slowed down as if it were about to stop, Labine said. “However, it accellerated quickly and crashed into the passenger side of their cruiser,” he said. “The vehicle hit with such force it bounced up onto the curb and struck the stop sign.”
Morris was wedged in on the driver’s side because of the position in which the Hyundai came to rest. Labine and other officers removed her from the passenger side and she was taken into custody without further incident.
Kamer was later treated at Landmark Medical Center for an injury to his arm, according to police.