Two people were killed and three others injured after the driver of a minivan fleeing D.C. police lost control of his vehicle and slammed into a police cruiser in Northeast early Sunday morning.
The accident happened just before 3 a.m. in the 400 block of Taylor Street Northeast, near Hawaii Avenue.
Investigators say that units received calls for the sound of gunshots in the 700 block of Otis Place, Northwest. One responding unit was flagged down at the corner of Georgia Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue, Northwest by a man who said that he had been shot at from a burgundy Plymouth minivan with Virginia license tags.
Another unit saw the minivan speeding through a stop sign in the 300 block of Upshur Street, Northwest. Police cars chased the van to the 400 block of Taylor Street, where the driver lost control of the vehicle.
Police say that the van landed on the hood of the police car and all three passengers were ejected. Two of the passengers, 19-year-old Thaddeus Alphonso Howard and 18-year-old William Kurland Joseph Adams IV, died as a result of the crash. The third passenger, a juvenile, was taken to a local hospital, as were the two officers in the cruiser. The suspect is listed as being in critical condition, while both officers suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
The identities of the victims have not been released, as next of kin notification is pending. An investigation into both the crash and the initial shooting is ongoing.
