Wichita man shot by deputy led police on a chase after running stop sign, sheriff says

Update:

A man shot by a sheriff’s deputy during a chase has been arrested after he drove at one deputy before ramming another deputy’s patrol vehicle, cops said.

Sheriff Jeff Easter said the deputy shot Jeremy E. Sanford late Tuesday night while Sanford led law enforcement on a pursuit that started when he failed to stop at a stop sign in south Wichita.

A third watch deputy, starting his shift at around 10:30 p.m., left the squad room to observe a location believed to be frequented by people involved a burglary ring, Easter said. The deputy saw a white Ford F-250 pickup, which had previously been at that location, run a stop sign.

The deputy attempted to stop the truck for the traffic violation at around 11:22 p.m. near Hydraulic and Scott. The pickup’s driver did not pull over, and the deputy decided to chase the vehicle.

The initial speeds of the chase were between 40 and 50 mph and there was light traffic. The chase was allowed to continue due to multiple traffic violations, Easter said.

About nine minutes after the chase started, the pickup’s driver ran over spike strips at Hydraulic and Clark. A Wichita police officer had placed the tire deflation device at the intersection. The device was successful on two of the pickup’s tires, Easter said.

The deputy who initiated the stop is not authorized to perform a tactical vehicle intervention because he is not certified in the tactic and his patrol vehicle does not have the necessary equipment.

“We had to wait for another deputy who was in the area ... to take the lead in the chase to attempt that maneuver,” Easter said.

About a minute later, a sheriff’s deputy performed a tactical vehicle intervention in an attempt to end the pursuit. The pickup was spun around and brought to a stop for a short time, but the driver was spinning his wheels and continued to flee, Easter said.

At around 11:33 p.m., the same deputy performed a second tactical vehicle intervention. The truck was again brought to a stop, this time with its wheels on the median of Pawnee at Victoria.

About 15 seconds after the second use of the tactic, Sanford drove straight at the deputy, who had gotten out of his patrol vehicle, Easter said. The deputy had been standing in the street to avoid any potential of crossfire with other law enforcement officers in the area as they attempted to conduct a felony car stop. The deputy was able to move out of the way of the truck, which started driving the wrong way on Pawnee.

Body camera video from the deputies involved showed that other people were forced to drive their vehicles onto the curb to avoid crashing into the pickup, which was traveling westbound in the eastbound lanes of Pawnee, Easter said.

“He was not somebody that wanted to pull over, he was not somebody that wanted to stop, and he put a lot of people in danger,” Easter said. “Vehicles can be just as dangerous or more dangerous than a small bullet.”

Another deputy performed a third tactical vehicle intervention at Pawnee and Laura at around 11:34 p.m. The pickup spun into the curb of the median, where the deputy position his patrol vehicle against the pickup to try to end the chase.

But Sanford kept spinning “what was left” of the wheels and put the truck in reverse, then rammed into an additional patrol vehicle parked behind him and continued to try to flee, Easter said.

The deputy who had performed the third tactical vehicle intervention then shot Sanford less than 30 seconds later, Easter said, thinking that “deadly force (was) being used to stop the suspect from further endangering people or causing injury to anybody.”

The deputy fired at least five shots into the windshield. Sanford was struck twice — one bullet went through his left arm, and another grazed his head, Easter said. He was taken into custody and then to Via Christi Hospital St. Francis.

“Those deputies had to make very split-second decisions on the tactical vehicle intervention techniques and the decision to fire upon the suspect to prevent him from causing any more injury or death,” Easter said.

No law enforcement officers reported injuries during the incident.

Illegal drugs are thought to be a factor in the chase, Easter said. He declined to go into more detail, citing ongoing tests to confirm that drug use was involved.

“Illicit drug use, that causes people to make really bad decisions, and that forces us into decisions that we don’t necessarily want to make but we have to make,” Easter said.

Drugs are driving crime rates in Sedgwick County, especially non-violent property crimes, he said.

“Those folks normally can’t hold a job because of their addiction, so they’ve got to generate that money somehow to feed their addiction, so they’re out burglarizing, stealing,” he said.

booked into the Sedgwick County Jail

One of the warrants was for traffic violations, Easter said. The other two were for felony case probation violations.

Kansas Department of Corrections records show Sanford has prior convictions in Sedgwick County for flee and attempt to elude law enforcement and speeding in 2011 and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in 2012.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is assisting with Tuesday’s case, which includes both a criminal investigation and an internal investigation by the professional standards unit. The district attorney’s office will review the case upon completion of the criminal investigation.

The deputy who fired the shots is on administrative leave, per department policy in officer-involved shootings. He is 43 years old, has 19 years of law enforcement experience and has been with the sheriff’s office for 10 years.

The deputy was not identified. The sheriff’s office is not publicly releasing body camera footage from the incident.

Tuesday’s incident was the second officer-involved shooting by a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office deputy in two days. David Bosiljevac was killed after pointing an airsoft gun at a deputy on Monday.

Original story:

A man was shot by a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s deputy after a car chase in south Wichita.

It happened just before 11:30 Tuesday night. A deputy tried to pull over a vehicle for a traffic violation at Scott and Hydraulic, near Pawnee and Hydraulic. The driver led the deputy on a brief chase, Sheriff’s Col. Greg Pollock told reporters on the scene.

The driver, a man in his 50s, then rammed a deputy’s vehicle near Laura and Pawnee, Pollock said. It appeared the man was driving a white truck.

That’s when a deputy shot the man, who was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, Pollock said.

No deputies were injured. Pawnee was closed between Hydraulic and Washington early Wednesday morning for an investigation of the shooting.

This is the second shooting by a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s deputy in two days. The first shooting was Monday about a mile south of the Tuesday night shooting.

This story was originally published January 30, 2019 at 8:25 AM.