There was a loud automobile collision on the 3000 block of E. Broad St. early Sunday at 12:30am. The witness ran outside to find an individual in a small SUV had hit an oncoming motorist, after which he had hit another parked car while attempting to park backwards. At that point, unable to drive further, he was apprehended by Richmond Police Officers. That is where the story gets really interesting. We received this account and a video from an eyewitness who was one of several witnesses to the scene.



There was a loud automobile collision on the 3000 block of E. Broad St. early Sunday at 12:30am. The witness ran outside to find an individual in a small SUV had hit an oncoming motorist, after which he had hit another parked car while attempting to park backwards. At that point, unable to drive further, he was apprehended by Richmond Police Officers. That is where the story gets really interesting. We received this account and a video from an eyewitness who was one of several witnesses to the scene.

Last night around 12:30am my roommates and I were startled by a loud collision outside our house on the 3000 block of East Broad Street. We ran outside to find a man in a small SUV had hit an oncoming car, and then managed to find his way across the street, where he parked the nose of his vehicle in my wheel well. He appeared to be attempting to drive off at that point, but luckily, his car was having none of it. He ended up in jail. But he is not the focus of this story.

Our story begins during the fallout from that original incident. The scene is this: the SUV is “parked” diagonally, facing west on Broad Street, into the driver’s side of my east-facing parked car. The police have stopped a patrol car diagonally across the two lanes with their lights on, effectively blocking off the road at the intersection of 30th, just behind the westbound stop sign, and just west of the wrecked SUV. Luckily everyone is OK, just cold and shaken.

That’s when another car approached at a rate of speed clearly higher than the posted limit, heading east on Broad. The car blew through the stop sign without decelerating, and we were forced to flee the street towards the sidewalk as we realized that this was not another cop rushing to the scene, but a driver who has clearly failed to notice a stop sign, an automobile accident, and flashing police lights, and is headed straight for a head on collision with the wrecked SUV. The oncoming vehicle slammed on its brakes, swerved around the damaged vehicles, nearly hitting the cop car (lights still blaring), and is forced to a stop, right where we had all been standing, by one of the officers tending to the accident.

A petite blonde driving a Fiat with the license plate KAAATIE rolled down the window and nearly immediately breaks into hysterics, alternating between what sounds like crying and laughing, and demanding the cop tell her what she “legally did wrong.” She then got out of her car, spilling the entire contents of her purse on the street while trying to argue with the attending officer, and stumbled around for a minute before being told to get back in her car. She repeated this scene, minus the purse spilling, at least three times, each time being told forcefully to return to her vehicle. Each time she completely disregarded the police, and seemed oblivious to the fact that she very nearly plowed into a group of people and a cop car. She also hit her face on her steering wheel so hard her horn sounded. Around this time we hear her say the words “dad” and “officer” amidst her incoherent shouting.

At least two witnesses heard the officer consent to speak with the girl’s father on her cellphone, at which point she made a call and handed it to him.

Approximately half an hour later, a large, black Ford truck arrived on the scene. A man with a military build, salt and pepper hair, and a 1970’s style mustache emerged from the driver’s side, his blonde wife from the passenger side. The Fiat driver once again got out of her car, and started stumbling towards the man from the truck, yelling unintelligibly about the situation. He shouted, “Katie, shut up and get back in the car! I’m going to let them take you if you don’t get back in the car NOW!”

This is when the video was shot:

We then see this man (in the yellow hoodie in the video) pull the attending officer aside, where they speak out of earshot for less than a minute. When the man returns, he tells us to stop taking the video, pulls the belligerent woman from her car, drags her to his truck, throws her in, and drives away. We look on in inarticulate outrage. The blonde woman gets in Katie’s Fiat and drives away.

There was no field sobriety test. No breathalyzer. So why was she allowed to go, free of repercussion?

UPDATE 8:11PM

Richmond Police Department

In reference to cell phone video of part of an incident that occurred this weekend in Church Hill, the Richmond Police Department would like the public to know that Internal Affairs detectives are aware of the incident and are investigating to determine exactly what happened.

They are in the very early stages of the investigation, and anyone with any information about this incident may contact them at 646-6816.