Speeding biker comes to abrupt stop

WASILLA — A motorcycle running from the police Thursday wound up smashing into a patrol car on Seward-Meridian Parkway.

Acting Wasilla Police Chief Craig Robinson said officers first spotted the motorcycle at Parks Highway and Hermon Road driving with expired registration.

Police tried to pull the motorcycle over but the driver wouldn’t stop. Robinson said the chase continued from there, running through Whispering Woods subdivision and around the Seward-Meridian Parkway area.

He said there wasn’t any one officer who was conducting the chase. That’s how it goes sometimes when chasing motorcycles, he said.

“This officer would see it and chase it for a minute or two and then lose it, and a minute later another officer would see it,” Robinson said.

Robinson said at some point officer Jentry Crain saw the motorcycle on Seward-Meridian. The bike was heading northbound, Crain was driving southbound.

“He pulls over to the right, the bike tries to pass him to go over onto the left hand side of the road to go into the dirt,” Robinson said.

The motorcycle tried to accelerate around Crain, lost control, and smacked into the front of Crain’s patrol car.

“The police car was basically stopped at the time of the impact and the bike was accelerating hard trying to get past him,” Robinson said.

The driver,p Smith, 21, wasn’t hurt in the crash. On scene, he was loaded into a patrol car rather than an ambulance. He was jailed for felony eluding arrest. Jail records late Monday afternoon showed he was still incarcerated at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility.

Traffic was closed in one lane of Seward-Meridian Parkway for a good portion of the afternoon as officers cleared the scene.

Robinson said that when a patrol car gets banged up like that there is an investigation. He said one of his officers has been assigned to look into the matter, just as they would look at any car crash.

“If there was real serious injuries or a fatality we might even ask another agency to investigate it,” Robinson said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.