Gary man gets 22 years for fleeing officers, injuring 2 in crash

A Gary man was sentenced to 22 years Thursday for going on a highspeed chase, crashing into a cop car and injuring two police officers.

Kenneth D. Vaughn, 41, represented himself in court. He appeared to say he would appeal. Court records show an appellate lawyer has been requested.

A jury convicted him in February of all but one charge including battery and resisting law enforcement. He faced up to 26 years in prison.

Vaughn characterized it as a “car accident,” but deputy prosecuting attorney Brad Carter disagreed.

“If he had just pulled over” the case would never had happened, Carter said.

Vaughn said in the almost 10 years since he last got out of prison, he’d had “a few run-ins” with the law, but more or less stayed “out of trouble.” His youngest child is 2 months old, born just days before the trial, he said.

“I made a mistake,” he said. It wasn’t “worth taking someone away from their kids … for a car accident.”

Judge Pro Tempore Lemuel Stigler, also a defense lawyer, oversaw the case.

Officers were called at 6:19 p.m. Dec. 7 to the area near 21st Avenue and Virginia Street in Gary for a shots fired call, records show.

Witnesses later told Gary Police they saw Vaughn arguing with another man outside a tire shop. His car was circling the block before witnesses heard shots fired from his black Chrysler 200, according to the affidavit.

When an officer tried to pull him over, he took off, running stop signs and traffic lights and topping 110 mph down Martin Luther King Drive, documents state.

He tried to brake, but “swerved” into a police car near 35th Avenue and Georgia Street, sending the two officers inside to the hospital. Vaughn got out and ran off. One officer tried to aim a stun gun at his back, but a second caught up to Vaughn, tackled and arrested him.

Deputy prosecuting attorney Bernie Johnsen, a supervisor, said in February that Vaughn had rejected offers for a public defender “three to four” times during the case, while successfully petitioning for a speedy trial. So, by the trial’s first day, when Vaughn asked in court to get a lawyer, legally it was too late, Johnsen said.