Police chase brings ‘excitement’ to Signal Mountain neighborhood
It takes more than a high-speed chase onto his property to call off a Labor Day get-together for Larry Bascom.
Around 3 p.m., two men in a reportedly stolen Dodge Durango stopped running from the law when they left the pavement in the Boston Branch neighborhood on Signal Mountain.
“We heard this screech and sirens, and this guy came through here,” Bascom said, pointing to a downed section of wooden fence and a frazzled rose bush at the road’s edge, drawing a line to where the SUV crashed into a tree.
Bascom said his wife saw it happen through a window as they readied for company, due at 4 p.m.
“It’s a little excitement,” Bascom said, laughing a little. “If he came later, we’d have been siting there.”
Not far from the crashed SUV, his friends sat in lawn chairs and took turns playing cornhole.
At least one Soddy-Daisy police car and several Hamilton County Sheriff ’s Office vehicles lined the road by Bascom’s house; a couple of ambulances and at least three sheriff’s vehicles had just departed.
Police at the scene said the chase began after a Soddy-Daisy officer pulled the pair over. The suspects sped away after the officer discovered the vehicle was stolen, leading police on a chase up Roberts Mill Road. Before they crashed in Bascom’s yard, the pair smashed through the Boston Branch community gate.
Bascom said police caught one man right off the bat, but they had to hunt the other one down on foot. It took 30 or 35 minutes to catch him in the dense woods and steep ground.
“Six policemen fanned through the woods, guns drawn,” Bascom said. “Police were just everywhere.”
The suspects’ identities or their charges could not be confirmed through the Hamilton County Sheriff ’s Office or the Soddy-Daisy Police Department. It is unclear whether anyone suffered injuries.