What some could have mistaken as a scene from a movie unfolded in Stafford County on Friday night, as a sheriff’s deputy’s car was stolen and then taken on a wild chase.
Stafford sheriff’s deputies were called about 9 p.m. to a home in at 85 Octagon Trail near Fredericksburg for a report of a man who was drunk in public and possibly injured.
They arrived, and the man took off into a wooded area outside his home, said Stafford sheriff’s spokesman Bill Kennedy.
As the deputies were trying to coax him out of the woods, the man circled around, jumped into a Stafford sheriff’s cruiser and sped away down Va. 218 into King George County.
The fleeing man drove the stolen car to the home of an off-duty King George County Sheriff’s deputy, whom he had previous contact with. But rather than park the car, the man rammed the stolen cruiser into the off-duty deputy’s cruiser parked outside the home.
No one was inside the parked cruiser when it was struck, said Kennedy.
Unrelenting and uninjured, the man then drove the stolen police cruiser back into Stafford County where not one, but two Virginia State Police cruisers that had been called to help capture him.
The driver also rammed those cars, said Kennedy.
By now, police had decided to try and stop the stolen car by placing a stinger tool across the road to puncture its tires. When the car drove across it, the stinger flattened the car’s front tire but failed to stop the car.
The man drove back to his home on Octagon Trail, where he finally crashed into a utility pole.
After a brief struggle, the man was arrested and no one was hurt in the ordeal, said Kennedy.
Thomas J. Fincham, 27, is charged with driving under the influence, failing to maintain control of his car, felony eluding, grand larceny, and with impersonating a police officer, said Kennedy.
He is being held in the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford County.
