What da truck!
She’s sent to psych ward after theft, rampage in mail vehicle
Shocking video shows Brooklyn police surrounding a homeless woman as she tries to escape with a stolen postal truck, with cops screaming at her to ditch the vehicle before wrestling her to the ground.
At a Brooklyn Criminal Court hearing Saturday, suspect Martha Thaxton was ordered to a psychiatric hospital after a judge dismissed charges including burglary, car theft, possession of stolen property and reckless endangerment in the Friday evening rampage that damaged more a dozen cars.
A video posted on Instagram shows Thaxton, 21, in the U.S. Postal Service truck on Fulton St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant around 6:05 p.m. as NYPD officers close in.
“Get out of the car!” the cops yell out, the clip shows.
One officer strikes the driver’s side door of the truck with his baton as Thaxton lurches back and forth.
“Don’t do that s—- yo!” a stunned onlooker screams at Thaxton. “You’ll get shot!”
Thaxton slammed into a parked car in front of her at least three times while trying to maneuver around an NYPD cruiser blocking her in, the video shows.
“She was right here trying to get away and the cops pointed their guns at her,” witness Daryl Smith, 38, said Saturday.
“I saw her messing with her eyes. ... So I just started yelling out ‘She can’t see, she can’t see,’ and that’s when they [cops] decided to run in and grab her,” said Smith, who caught the arrest on camera.
Smith’s video shows officers pulling open the passenger side door and yanking Thaxton out of the mail truck as alarms go off on the damaged cars.
Cops pepper-sprayed Thaxton through the truck window. The clip shows the woman, wearing a light blue surgical mask under her chin, screaming as she’s thrown to the ground and handcuffed.
“She’s mentally unstable. She doesn’t belong in jail,” Smith said.
A nearby pharmacy worker, who would only identify himself as Jesus, disagreed. “You’re endangering the public and you’re destroying property,” he said Saturday.
But he added jokingly: “If you’re going to steal a postal truck, it should have been during the holidays,” noting that the truck would have been filled with gifts.
At a video arraignment Saturday, Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Jordan Rossman asked a judge to put Thaxton in a psychiatric facility — and noted that even if the charges remained lodged against her, state law would not let her be locked up while awaiting trial.
“Believe it or not, this is not a bail qualifying offense,” Rossman told Judge Hilary Gingold.
Gingold agreed with Rossman’s request, and ordered Thaxton to a psychiatric hospital and dismissed the charges.