Alabama Police Car Stolen After Chase
By Jason Houston - Franklin County Times
09-26-03
RED BAY – A routine traffic stop turned out to be anything but routine Wednesday, as two men stole a police cruiser after a high-speed chase, later abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot.
One of the men remained at large at press time.
According to Franklin County Sheriff’s Department officials, the case began when a sheriff’s deputy attempted to pull a car over in the Vina area Wednesday morning for a traffic violation.
The driver of the car, which contained three other passengers, refused to stop, leading to a chase.
The vehicle eventually wrecked on Renfro Road in Vina, and two of the four passengers in the car fled on foot. The other two were arrested at that point.
Bradford Burney, 37, of 853 County Road 988 in Cullman, and Donald Kuykendall, 32, of 610 East Second Street in Red Bay, were arrested and charged with illegal possession of prohibited liquor, according to sheriff’s department officials.
Burney also has several pending felony warrants, officials said.
Officers identified one of the two men who fled into the woods as Ronald Vincent of Mississippi.
With the two arrested men in custody, officers began searching for the other two men, investigators said. The search ranged far off the road where the accident took place, and lasted more than an hour.
During the search, the two men somehow doubled back to the original accident scene and managed to jump in a deputy’s car and leave the scene, officials said.
"We immediately put the word out to surrounding agencies (about the stolen police car)," a spokesman for the sheriff’s department said. "The vehicle was recovered a few hours later."
The chase and search for the stolen car involved officers from a multitude of agencies, including the sheriff’s department, the Franklin County District Attorney’s office, the Russellville Police Department, the Red Bay Police Department, Mississippi state troopers and Mississippi authorities.
The sheriff’s car was found around 2:30p.m., Wednesday, abandoned on Jericho Road in Itawamba County in Mississippi. The car was not damaged.