A Trooper’s PIT Move Put An Innocent Elderly Pair In The Hospital After A 130-MPH Chase

Police have an unquestionably difficult job, but that does not exempt them from scrutiny when innocent people get hurt. Newly released dashcam footage shows an Arkansas State Police trooper using a Tactical Vehicle Intervention, or TVI (AKA PIT maneuver), during a chase on I-555 near Trumann that had reached 130 mph.

The maneuver ended with the fleeing driver in custody and two uninvolved elderly motorists seriously injured. At highway speed, ending a pursuit and ending the danger are not necessarily the same thing.

The two people in the third vehicle, a 68-year-old woman and a 73-year-old man, were taken to Regional One Medical Center in Memphis with serious injuries. The fleeing suspect, 32-year-old Laloyd L. Hamilton III, was evaluated at a Jonesboro hospital before being booked into the Poinsett County Detention Center.

According to the ASP incident report, Cpl. Logan Hall initially clocked Hamilton’s Hyundai Sonata at 90 mph (145 km/h) in a 75-mph (121 km/h) zone. Hamilton allegedly accelerated to 130 mph (209 km/h), passed traffic on the right, and triggered a pursuit. Troopers claim they later found marijuana, pills, and an unidentified liquid in the Sonata; Hamilton faces felony fleeing, second-degree battery, drug charges, hazardous driving, and DWI.

Read: Arkansas State Troopers Will Even PIT A Motorcyclist

The footage shows Hall make contact with the Sonata’s rear quarter panel. The Hyundai slides left, Hamilton appears to overcorrect, and the car strikes a Toyota 4Runner travelling beside it. The 4Runner then leaves the roadway and rolls. It appears that its driver had begun slowing as the pursuit approached, perhaps trying to give the two vehicles room to pass.

There is no nationwide PIT speed limit, and ASP has not publicly identified a numerical TVI ceiling. Still, several major departments limit the maneuver to roughly 35 mph (56 km/h) under ordinary conditions, treating faster attempts as deadly force. ASP has not said how fast Hamilton’s Sonata was traveling when Hall made contact, only that the pursuit had reached 130 mph (209 km/h).

A Pattern

This is not new terrain for Arkansas State Police. In 2021, the agency revised its PIT policy after settling with a pregnant woman whose SUV flipped during a traffic stop. And in a January release about a trooper who performed a TVI on the wrong vehicle, ASP said its troopers had carried out 1,428 TVIs since 2016.

That does not establish that Hall acted outside policy. Hamilton allegedly presented a very real danger before the TVI occurred. But the tactic did not erase that danger. It transferred it to two people who had nothing to do with the chase. Hamilton should face consequences if the allegations hold up. The harder question is whether a policy built around stopping fleeing drivers this aggressively can call the outcome a success when innocent people are the ones taken away in ambulances.

Credit: ASP