NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. – A police pursuit of theft suspects in Yulee ended in a crash with an innocent woman suffering critical injuries on Wednesday afternoon.
The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office said it was chasing four theft suspects who were caught stealing at the Kohl’s department store in the Villages of Amelia shopping center.
Sometime during the pursuit, the suspects hit a woman’s car head-on around 2:30 p.m. on State Road A1A near Santa Barbara Street at the entrance of the Lofton Oaks housing development, causing a major crash that blocked all lanes on A1A, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
Before the suspects crashed into the woman’s vehicle, the sheriff’s office said they collided with a deputy’s cruiser.
Retired JSO Director Tom Hackney said if the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was involved, it wouldn’t fall under their policy to chase someone, but there may be more to the story as to why Nassau County deputies chased the suspects.
“Was it something more than this on the surface of just a retail theft? This could be associated with a retail theft ring that has more than one suspect and more than one incident going on. So it would cause the involved deputies to maybe want to feel free like they were able to justify that pursuit a little bit more than just your normal theft suspect since there were multiple suspects involved in this,” Hackney said.
The woman was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, and all four suspects were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Hackney said it’s the worst-case scenario that an innocent person was hurt.
“That is why ... people are looking a little harder and police agencies across the nation are looking a little harder at the justifications for pursuits and continuation of pursuits is just because of that, because of that risk to innocent parties,” Hackney said.
No deputies were injured, FHP said.
Shawn Clark lives in St. Marys, Georgia, and got caught in the traffic caused by the chase.
“It’s rare that you see traffic like that, especially on Pages Dairy,” Clark said.
Clark was shopping at Kohl’s a few hours after the incident happened. He said everything was back to normal inside the store.
“You’d never know anything happened in Kohl’s. I didn’t even know there was a theft in there,” Clark said.