Dayton, OH - Woman Robs Gas Station With Hammer - Handcuffed - Steals Englewood Police Cruiser - High Speed Chase - Dayton Officer Injured

Robbery suspect slips cuffs, steals cruiser, leads chase
Woman is arrested when she returns to the neighborhood where she had stolen the police car.
By James Cummings
Sunday, August 03, 2008

A woman led Dayton and Englewood police on a high-speed chase driving an Englewood police cruiser she stole after being arrested Saturday morning, Aug. 2, according to police.
 

 One Dayton officer was sent to the hospital to check scrapes and bruises he received in a fall trying to keep the woman from driving away in the Englewood cruiser.

"He tried to reach through the window and put the cruiser in park," said Sgt. Bill Keller of the Dayton police. "But she floored it, and he went tumbling."

Sgt. Mike Lang of the Englewood police said the chain of events started at 7:45 a.m. when a woman wielding a hammer as her only visible weapon robbed a Marathon gas station at 311 S. Main St. in Englewood.

The woman, identified as Amber O'Malley, 31, of Kettering, will be charged with felonious assault on a police officer, grand theft auto and felony fleeing and eluding in addition to the robbery charges from Englewood, Keller said.

Lang said police responded to the scene quickly after receiving a call about the robbery and saw the suspect driving away. The officers gave chase, and the woman drove away fleeing south toward Dayton at high speed.

Lang said the Englewood officers slowed down to lessen the danger of chasing a suspect through residential areas. "She was only armed with a hammer. We didn't want to get somebody hurt by trying to chase her," Lang said.

The Englewood officers radioed police in Dayton with a description of the fleeing car and its last known position and direction.

Sgt. Keller from Dayton said an evidence crew member working at a scene on Bruce Avenue about three blocks east of Main Street heard a broadcast describing the car and realized he had just seen a woman park such a car three doors from where he was standing.

The evidence technician radioed the information to dispatchers, and a Dayton police crew came to the scene, found the woman and took her into custody.

Keller said Englewood crews arrived a time later. The officers removed the Dayton handcuffs the suspect was wearing, fitted her with Englewood handcuffs and locked her in the back seat of an Englewood cruiser.

"A couple minutes later, the Englewood officers and the Dayton officers were talking about the case when one of them looked up and saw a pink fuzzy slipper disappearing into the front seat of the Englewood cruiser," Keller said.

Apparently the woman had managed to remove her handcuffs, open the back door of the cruiser and climb into the driver's seat. Officers ran toward the car, and one reached it in time to reach through the window, but the woman sped away.

Keller said the woman drove the cruiser south onto Interstate 75 with police cruisers in hot pursuit. She turned onto U.S. 35, got off on James H. McGee Boulevard, and drove on Hoover Avenue, Gettysburg Avenue and Siebenthaler Avenue before officers concerned about chasing her too fast lost sight of the fleeing cruiser.

Keller said, however, that Englewood police cruisers are equipped with global positioning equipment, and Englewood officers tracked the car and realized it had stopped again on Bruce Avenue, about two blocks from where the woman was first arrested.

"Maybe she thought we had cleared the scene, and she'd be able to get back in her own car," Keller. "We don't know why she came back."

When officers swarmed the neighborhood they didn't spot the woman either in the cruiser or her car, so they formed a perimeter and began looking for a woman on foot. They found her a short time later hiding in a garage.

Keller said they arrested the woman and transported her to jail, this time with no incident
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