Cars crash, building collapses, leaving 1 dead
Five others suffer injuries; Baltimore Police say one car involved was stolen
A vehicle collision in East Baltimore involving a car fleeing from police left a pedestrian dead, five car passengers injured and a building partially collapsed Wednesday night.
Baltimore Police said the car was stolen and that it fled about “four or five blocks” from where officers first spotted it before crashing.
Police offered few details about how they attempted to stop the car and what happened next other than that the vehicle accelerated away and ultimately crashed into a second vehicle and then into a building on the southeast corner of North Wolfe
Street and East North Avenue.
Baltimore Police said in a news release Thursday evening that the crash killed Alfred Fincher, 54. He was on the sidewalk, officials said.
Five people who were in the vehicles were injured and later released from area hospitals. Two were in the 2017 Hyundai Sonata which police said was stolen, and three were in a 2006 Mitsubishi Eclipse that was struck by the Sonata.
The driver of the Sonata, 33-year-old Shawn Lee Brunson, has been arrested and charged with auto theft, and future charges are pending, police said, adding that the vehicle was stolen Feb. 7 in the city.
Nuquanna Zimmerman, the daughter of a woman in the vehicle that was struck, said her mother, Nina Subber, was in surgery Thursday and had broken both ankles and fractured a knee. The other two passengers, her aunt and cousin, also were injured.
Zimmerman told The Baltimore Sun that her family members were coming home from church Wednesday night and were waiting at a traffic light in East Baltimore when they were struck from behind. The car spun around several times, she said, before crashing into the building that eventually collapsed.
Police would not say how officers attempted to stop the vehicle that fled or whether they initiated a pursuit.
“I don’t know that we were pursuing at
all. We attempted to stop it,” Baltimore Police Deputy Commissioner Richard Worley told reporters Wednesday night. “That’s still under investigation. We’ll look at all the body-worn camera, any other video, to see what in fact happened to cause the vehicle to take off.”
Baltimore Police’s Special Investigations Response Team and its Crash Team are investigating the incident, police said in a news release.
Worley said authorities still were determining whether the Independent Investigations Division of the Attorney General’s Office would be handling the matter. The office is tasked with investigating all statewide civilian deaths involving police.
Thomas Lester, a spokesman for the Independent Investigations Division, told The Sun on Thursday that the unit had been contacted about the fatal crash and was “reviewing” to see whether it would fall under its jurisdiction for investigation.
When making the decision, Lester said, the office assesses whether or how an officer’s actions resulted in a civilian’s death, if that individual was in custody and whether or how force was used.
Already in 2023, the unit is investigating one case in Baltimore County where officers shot and killed a man while attempting to apprehend the driver of a vehicle last month.
Baltimore Police policies say officers can chase a fleeing vehicle if there is a felony suspect inside who poses an “immediate threat” of death or injury, and if there is probable cause before the pursuit that he or she committed a felony that resulted or could have resulted in death or serious injury.
Officers are specifically prohibited from pursuing a car if the initial violation is a “crime against property,” including auto theft or a misdemeanor, traffic offense or nonviolent warrant.
According to the policy, factors for consideration include the safety of the public, familiarity with the area, whether the suspect’s identity is verified, other people in the fleeing vehicle, other resources available for assistance and the chance of apprehending the suspect at a later time.
Supervisors are required to approve or disapprove a pursuit once it’s started and can send more cars to join.
Harold Madison, the president of the New South Clifton Park Community Association, went to the scene after being alerted about a bad crash by a neighbor and said it looked like a “catastrophe.”
“My observation was that I didn’t know we had that many firefighters in Baltimore City, and equipment,” Madison said. “They immediately had the whole neighborhood shut down.”
Madison said it wasn’t clear to bystanders what had taken place, and described seeing a young man in handcuffs sitting on the ground at one point.
He also expressed concern about the structural integrity of the rest of the East North Avenue block next to the collapsed corner building — and about the amount of communication provided to community members following the crash.
“I don’t think they understand that we needed to be briefed,” Madison said. “I got the call from one of my neighbors that it was a terrible accident and that I need to come and bring my presence so that we could find out if it was somebody in the neighborhood or not, but there’s nobody giving a report to the community.”