[narrator] In Tennessee, a suspect resists arrest and steals a patrol car.
I could see that he was driving towards me.
I knew that that was probably not going to be survivable.
[narrator] In Los Angeles, a light plane crashes onto railroad tracks.
There was a huge train coming in our direction.
There was no way that this train was going to be stopping in time.
[narrator] And in Florida, an armed suspect flees.
Twenty-four miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee,
is Pleasant View.
I've been in law enforcement since 2002, full-time.
Community is everything. That's why I do this job.
It brings me a peace of mind in my heart and in my soul.
[Tad Wheeler] We're pretty tight knit in the department.
It's more like a family atmosphere.
Lieutenant Miller knows my whole family.
We've been through a lot together in this job.
[Miller] Chief Wheeler and I are best friends.
We're kind of those people that nobody better jump between us
because now they're going to have to fight us both.
[narrator] A Montgomery County officer makes a traffic stop
on a vehicle with tinted windows.
Further checks showed the driver, Andrew Timmerman had a suspended license.
[Miller] Somebody that's driving on a suspended license,
that was enough to be concerned about.
Something's not right with this situation.
I don't have any other...
[Wright] Drugs are an issue here.
Drug-induced or drug-motivated type crimes are almost a daily occurrence.
[narrator] With the perpetrator resisting arrest,
the officer stays at a safe distance while he calls for backup.
[Miller] When you hear that not only does he have the vehicle
but he is armed with another weapon.
That's the worst of the wors of scenarios for us.
It's incredibly scary.
We got a call that a patrol car had been stolen
from a Montgomery County sheriff's deputy.
A lot of thoughts, I guess, run through my head
The safety of the deputy himself, was he okay?
Had he been shot?
A patrol car that is being driven
by someone who's just committed a serious crime,
who obviously is driving at a high rate of speed,
he has no regard for anyone's safety.
They're dangerous. They're desperate.
[Miller] I'd started monitoring the radio better
and listened to what was going, heard the directions.
Once I'd heard for sure that he was going down Highway 49
towards Triangle Road, I figured I could get ahead of them there
and maybe cut them off there.
[Miller] I thought, this guy is totally out of control.
He was going to end up hitting somebody
in a passenger car that was trying to get away from him,
thinking that they're yielding to a legitimate police officer.
The chance of somebody getting hurt or killed was very high at that point.
Our job is to catch this guy
[Wright] There were officers that were following
and then officers that were coming in front of him,
to meet him head on.
It gets real intense.
I was 500 or 600 yards behind him when he come off the interstate.
He was traveling at a real high rate of speed
and he really just pulled away from me.
[Wheeler] When you take four to five jurisdictions and put them together,
dispatch is kind of the backbone that gives us the intel that we need.
[Wright] His radio was tune to the Montgomery County law enforcement channel.
We're on a completely different radio system and channel
in Cheatham County.
So he probably didn't hear how we were coordinating over the radio.
[Wright] The fact that he has a suspended license
would give a possible indication
that he's had a previous criminal history.
And if you're dealing with someone who's been in prison,
they are very desperate to get away
and they will do desperate and dangerous things to get away.
[Miller] You just have to re on your instinct.
The road he actually started down was Highway 49.
So thinking that, okay, I can probably go down and cut him off
at Triangle Road,
and I started to get there to set up.
When I first saw that vehicl come over the hill,
I immediately thought, he is going a lot faster than he should be.
Yeah, I knew this was our suspect vehicle
and I knew right then, I was the only one
that had the best chance to try to stop this.
I could kind of see that he was fixated on me and driving towards me,
I was thinking that I'm fixi to get hit by this car.
And this is going to hurt.
I knew that that was probably not going to be survivable.
As I got hit,
the wheels were still turnin towards me and he started rolling again
And I thought he was going t try to run over me again.
I'm trying to draw my pisto and I can't get my arm to work.
I don't know how bad I'm hurt, but I know I'm hurt.
I didn't know what his intention was
or if he was going to kill m
I knew I couldn't get up in time to jump out of the way.
I knew I didn't have time to spin around and draw my weapon.
The best thing that I could was to stay upright to get h
and possibly get knocked out of the way
rather than get trapped underneath the vehicle.
I just figured the best thing I can do is brace myself for an impact
and hopefully get knocked down.
I knew I was hurt, but I wa able to get my radio out.
The most important thing I could do at that point
was to keep relaying information.
I still wanted to make sure we got him caught before somebody else got hur
That was the biggest thing right then that kept me conscious.
[Wheeler] That's not something you eve expect to hear on the radio
is that anybody, as a police officer, has been hit.
Ken was my priority at that point.
[Wright] He's capable of stealing a patrol car and injuring two officers.
He's most definitely capable of killing someone.
As I arrived, a couple of officers were already there.
He was laying on the ground but he was still able to function.
[Miller] Chief Tad Wheeler.
He's the one that came to m and started taking care of m
and helping assess my injuries.
Then I was totally done, at that point. I let it all go and let him take care of me.
He's my best friend.
We had cars coming in from all different counties at that point.
They were coming from every county surrounding us
to try to swarm our county and just flood it with patrol cars
to try to find this guy at all costs.
He's an imminent danger to the the public
to the point where deadly force was probably necessary.
For a police officer to have to use deadly force
it's the most dramatic and intense moments of their whole career.
You might have to use your firearm to kill somebody.
A big concern at the end of a pursuit is how it's going to end.
The suspect is either gonna run, he's either gonna fight.
[narrator] Andrew Timmerman pled guilt to various offences
including resisting arrest, theft of property,
and evading arrest risking death or injury.
He was sentenced to two day in the county jail
and ten years' probation.
[Miller] I'd been maimed up pretty hard.
I had a couple of broken rib
But I was pretty fortunate.
I'd made my peace a long time ago that this could happen to me
I did ask Chief Wheeler to be the one to go notify my wife.
I knew I could trust him to get that message and take care of her.
[Wheeler] I think going through what we went through that da
standing there with Ken,
it made us appreciate those moments that we do have.
Ultimately, the base of this job is to help peopl
It comes with dangers, we know that
and we accept it when we go out there and do it every day,
but ultimately, we're there to help people.
[Wright] I think that Lieutenant Miller acted very heroically that day.
He risked his life to try to help stop this person.
[Miller] That tremendous outpouring of support, that brotherhood
it's very humbling to know that all those guys and girls would come for me,
little old me, to help me out.
It just makes me want to try harder to make them proud
and to do it for them, because they did it for me.
[narrator] In Los Angeles, California,
twenty-five miles north of downtown
is the community of Pacoima
LAPD's foothill division covers Sunland to... Pacoima
and also the Sun Valley areas.
[Aboyte] Being able to adapt I think, is the biggest
attribute a police office ca have, really.
Simple radio calls
might turn into something big and you need to be able to adapt to that.
[Cavestany] I was actually returning to the station fro another call.
In the distance,
I noticed a fairly large object.
It was at a little above street level and it was approaching the intersection
Did I really see that?
And it took me a second to realize that, yes, it was a plane and it was very low.
[indistinct dispatcher voice]
[Cavestany] When I got to the intersection.
That's when I saw the plane had crash landed on the railroad tracks.
It was a profuse amount of fuel leaking
from the wings.
I was expecting to see eithe heavily injured people or dead bodies.
But thankfully, I could see that the pilot was breathin
and obviously suffered some injuries, but he was moving around.
[Sherock] I'm at the station
I hear my colleague Sergean Cavestany broadcast that he observed
go down at the Whiteman Airport
about a block or two away.
We just dropped everything we were doing, we rushed to our car, and
immediately went to the scene to try to help out and do
anything we could to assist them.
[Lucky] I work for a stringe company called OC Hawk news
I have these
radios and scanners that are in my car
I can listen to the police,
fire radios, the sheriffs.
That day I heard
radio traffic that they saw
a plane crash happen.
We were the first on scene to meet with Sergeant Cavestany at the location.
I didn't really know what to expect.
[Cavestany] There were some civilians that were about t
try to get him out of the airplane.
I told them
leave him alone. Leave him where he's at.
If he had any sort of neck injury or spinal injury
and I was to move him, that could make it worse.
You know, leave him paralyzed or anything like that.
Once the fire department get there, they can stabilize hi
and then remove him from the wreckage.
We got the acknowledgement that the rail lines had
been notified to stop any train activity.
[Sherock] Oh it was all quie
and it seemed like the scene was, you know, secured.
[crossing bells ringing]
And then I noticed the bell and the lights flashing.
And the train arm started to go down, you know, indicating an oncoming train
You know, maybe the arms malfunctioned because I think the plane hit one of them.
There can't be a train comin Like, how could this get any worse?
[crossing bells ringing]
[Sherock] Sure enough
there was a huge train coming in our direction.
[train horn blaring]
[Cavestany] I thought for su
that that train would've seen us
and would start pressing on his brakes. But I turned bac
to the train and now it was
a 100 yards, or less, away from us.
All of us at the scene realized
that there was no way that this train was gonna be stopping in time.
[train horn blaring]
[radio chatter]
[Lucky] When I get there, I get my camera out
and I press record.
And then, that's when it happened.
[loud crash]
I was thinking everyone in the vicinity of where the plane was is probably dead.
[train horn approaching]
[crashes]
Damn.
[Sherock] I remember lookin
at this completely demolishe plane.
And I just looked at it and I thought, you know, I almost
died right now.
[men yelling in the distance]
[Cavestany] It wasn't until I watched the bodycam video
that I realized how close we were.
[crossing bells ringing]
[train horn blaring]
[loud crash]
[Sherock] We got the pilot o and I felt like an attorney
just waiting to figure out, you know, what's gonna happe to us.
Is the plane gonna explode? Or is the plane gonna be thrown
on top of us and crush us to death?
[Aboyte] I can just hear th crumpling of the metal from
when that train made impact on the plane.
I think that's what really truly scared me. When I heard that.
[Sherock] I think I got about ten or 15 feet
with the pilot and my colleagues, and I fell to the ground.
[Aboyte] I was telling the pilot, Mark, "You're okay, Mark. We're here with you.
"We're still with you." And
I think I repeated it several times to him but I definitely feel like I was saying it to
myself as well.
[Cavestany] I sent a unit
to go check on the occupants of the train and
thankfully, everybody was ok on there.
[bells tolling]
[Sherock] Everybody was worried about the pilot.
And ultimately, we learned that
his injuries were pretty... somewhat severe,
but he was supposedly gonna make a full recovery.
[Aboyte] He was just barely trying to take off from the airport.
But I didn't ascertain why he had crashed or what kinda
issue his airplane had sustained that caused him to try to perform
an emergency landing.
[Cavestany] I made the decision to
leave the pilot where he was at, initially.
If it had turned out to be a tragic situation,
that would've been one of th decisions I would've had to live with. Which
would've resulted in the death of my officers and the pilot.
Um, apologies... Uh...
Sorry, I get a little emotional with this, 'cause...
My wife kept on watching th videos over and over and ove
She told me she didn't know how to react.
She doesn't know whether to be mad, sad, or proud.
And she said she felt like she was a mixture of all of those.
And I told her, I'm like "You're absolutely right.
You every right to be every single
one of those."
[Lucky] If they didn't run in there and pull that guy o
that guy would not be alive today.
They are the true heroes.
[narrator] The National Transportation Safety Board
still investigating this incident.
Every time I hear a train horn, wherever I'm at it reminds me of the inciden
You know, what'll happen?
I think about it every time.
[narrator] On the northeast coast of
Florida is Flagler County.
Deputy Brandon Fiveash from the Flagler County Sheriff'
Office is on motorcycle patrol.
[Fiveash] It's a clear day, it's a beautiful day.
My partner and I's route on the west side of our county.
Doing some speed enforcement on a state road 100 west Flagler County.
[siren blaring]
[narrator] Deputy Fiveash spots a silver sedan
going 95 miles an hour in a 60 miles
an hour zone.
I immediately activated my emergency lights
and siren and try to catch up to the vehicle.
[siren blaring]
At which time, I then observ what appeared to be a male' hand throw objects from the
passenger side window.
I believed it to be narcotics at the time.
I get the driver information. I go back to my motorcycle at the time.
Now I need to
try and identify the passenger.
The passenger
said that he did not have any identification on him.
And he gave a date of birth younger than what he looked
So I did have a little bit of a red flag of
"Hey, this might not be accurate or correct."
But I gave him the benefit of the doubt to provide the information.
Head's up.
My partner was beginning to start to look for objects
that were thrown out the window while I continue trying
to piece all this together and figure out what was really going on.
Flagler advisory, he's got a signal zero. He's taking off.
The driver was forced out o the vehicle with a firearm.
We got a signal zero. He's taking off.
This vehicle is now fleeing a roadway into the public.
[engine starts]
My thought is to try and prevent any harm to
passing motorists and civilians that are in the area.
[wind rushing]
At this point, I just neede additional resources
in the direction of where this vehicle is travelling.
[Staly] I heard the deputy get on the radio stating tha
the vehicle that he'd stopped on a traffic stop was
now fleeing from him.
And he was armed.
An armed individual with deputies in pursuit is a ver dangerous combination.
It's all hands on deck.
[Fiveash] My job is to
keep eyes on the vehicle until additional units can arrive and take over.
Inside a motorcycle you're open to the elements.
Should something happen, you have no additional protection for you.
Since additional vehicles begin to show up, I give the priority in the pursuit.
[Staly] The area that the vehicle
is entering is a residentia
neighborhood.
It's very high-risk for anyone
around it.
It could be kids out playing so it's dangerous.
[narrator] The suspect speed into, and then out of, the residential neighborhood.
By now, even more units hav joined the chase.
I was off-duty and I was driving my patrol car to get an oil change.
I heard the vehicle pursuit going through on the radio.
Having my patrol vehicle an all my equipment with me,
I felt that if I can help in any way, then I should help.
I recall hearing on the radi that he was driving aggressively and
going through red lights.
In the moment, we're just thinking about staying safe and making sure that
the motorists are safe around us,
and trying to anticipate what his next move is gonna be so
that we can properly capture him.
[Reckenwald] I'm US1 and I fell into the chase.
You don't know what you're running into, you don't know who you're chasing, you don't
know what their intentions are so there's all kinds of things that can go wrong.
All kinds of things that can go south real quick.
[indistinct radio chatter]
I'm the second patrol car i the pursuit.
He was such a danger to society.
We had to get him apprehended.
[siren blaring]
[narrator] Deputy Fiveash's motorcycle is damaged durin the chase.
[Fiveash] I was losing air i the rear tire.
At that point, I notified dispatch and additional unit that I was going to be out o
the pursuit at that time.
It started with me. So then now not being able to be the at the end is
not a good feeling.
[siren wailing]
[narrator] Back on the road the chase reaches a critica point.
[Reckenwald] The interstate creates a huge concern
because when he cuts across lanes of traffic, he could easily clip another vehicle
causing a major incident on the interstate.
When you travel at those speeds, you start to lose friction between the tires a
the roadway, so it's easier to lose control.
We have to get this suspect off the road so
we're gonna go until he's caught.
[narrator] Police units bloc every exit from the parking lot, boxing in the suspect.
[Reckenwald] Once he stops, what is he gonna do?
Is he going to exit that vehicle with a firearm?
[Staly] He could go inside t furniture store and hold people hostage.
Or he could pull the rifle out and start shooting
at our deputies.
[illegible radio chatter]
[Reckenwald] He exits his vehicle while the vehicle is still in motion.
So the vehicle actually roll and collides with a parked vehicle.
I positioned my car in a way that I stopped him from
moving forward.
I saw the suspect running towards a major roadway wit high volume traffic.
I draw my taser,
I deploy my taser at him.
Then that gives us enough time to
safely apprehend him.
He actually got tackled onto the hood of my car.
And I still have a dent on t hood of my car from that incident.
After the suspect was apprehended,
I then walked over to the vehicle.
And then I could see the AR- rifle in the backseat.
His name was Serome Bell, and I'm familiar with him. We've had a couple
cases with him while I was in narcotics.
And actually, I think he wen to prison on one of my charges.
[Staly] So he had given the deputy a fictitious nam and quite often that happens
[FIveash] Once the suspect w secured and arrested down in Daytona,
I returned back to the original location and began to look for the items that had
been thrown out.
We ultimately found several different baggies containin retinol and cocaine.
[narrator] Serome Bell was found guilty of multiple crimes including
theft, drug, and firearm offences.
He was sentenced to five yea in prison.
The driver of the vehicle h stole was not previously kno to him and faced no charges
in relation to this incident
[Staly] This guy did a arme carjacking
in front of a deputy sheriff. Now, criminals are dumb,
but he gets the cake.
[Gamarra] The pursuit ended going on for
quite a while. It started in ...and ended in Daytona beach.
So, at least half an hour.
[Reckenwald] Considering th route that was travelled
and the length of time,
and the fact that there was loss of life, no injuries,
that was a huge win for law enforcement.