Police in South Carolina engaged in a not-so-hot pursuit as they chased a tractor excavator down a main highway for more than an hour at the speed an average adult walks.
The chase reached speeds of 4.8kph early on Sunday morning in North Charleston, police said.
Officers on a different call saw the big piece of construction equipment with treads and a shovel in front go across US Highway 78 at about 3:30am, North Charleston Police wrote in a report.
Photo: a screen grab from North Charleston Police Department website
A few minutes later, they got a burglary call from a business that was heavily damaged and saw the excavator slowly heading away, police said.
Several police cars immediately joined in the very slow pursuit. The excavator was going so slow that the cruisers would have to briefly stop several times a minute to not pass the construction equipment.
They had their blue lights and sirens on, and told the excavator driver over their loudspeakers that he was under arrest and needed to stop.
Other police cruisers blocked traffic.
The chase went on for an hour and 12 minutes before the excavator drove on to the Charleston County Fairgrounds property, where it got stuck.
The driver tried to run, but was followed by a drone until a police dog and handler caught up, authorities said.
The 53-year-old driver of the excavator was charged with failure to stop, and two counts of malicious injury to real property, jail records showed.
He was being held at the Charleston County jail on a US$22,000 bond, they showed.
Australia has announced an agreement with the tiny Pacific nation Nauru enabling it to send hundreds of immigrants to the barren island. The deal affects more than 220 immigrants in Australia, including some convicted of serious crimes. Australian Minister of Home Affairs Tony Burke signed the memorandum of understanding on a visit to Nauru, the government said in a statement on Friday. “It contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru,” it said. “Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic
‘NEO-NAZIS’: A minister described the rally as ‘spreading hate’ and ‘dividing our communities,’ adding that it had been organized and promoted by far-right groups Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies across the country yesterday that the center-left government condemned, saying they sought to spread hate and were linked to neo-Nazis. “March for Australia” rallies against immigration were held in Sydney, and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group’s Web site. “Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together,” the Web site said. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration.” The group also said it was concerned about culture,
ANGER: Unrest worsened after a taxi driver was killed by a police vehicle on Thursday, as protesters set alight government buildings across the nation Protests worsened overnight across major cities of Indonesia, far beyond the capital, Jakarta, as demonstrators defied Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s call for calm. The most serious unrest was seen in the eastern city of Makassar, while protests also unfolded in Bandung, Surabaya, Solo and Yogyakarta. By yesterday morning, crowds had dispersed in Jakarta. Troops patrolled the streets with tactical vehicles and helped civilians clear trash, although smoke was still rising in various protest sites. Three people died and five were injured in Makassar when protesters set fire to the regional parliament building during a plenary session on Friday evening, according to
STILL AFLOAT: Satellite images show that a Chinese ship damaged in a collision earlier this month was under repair on Hainan, but Beijing has not commented on the incident Australia, Canada and the Philippines on Wednesday deployed three warships and aircraft for drills against simulated aerial threats off a disputed South China Sea shoal where Chinese forces have used risky maneuvers to try to drive away Manila’s aircraft and ships. The Philippine military said the naval drills east of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) were concluded safely, and it did not mention any encounter with China’s coast guard, navy or suspected militia ships, which have been closely guarding the uninhabited fishing atoll off northwestern Philippines for years. Chinese officials did not immediately issue any comment on the naval drills, but they
RSS