MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — A car with a child inside goes over a cliff during a police chase in Maple Heights. Both the driver and the child survived.
Police records show the chase began Sunday afternoon when the driver ran a red light at Libby Road and Cato Street.
It ended behind a house on Stanley Avenue, a dead-end street.
“I heard the police siren getting louder and louder,” witness Ben Krawulski said.
Krawulski says he was rinsing off his truck parked in the street when the car police were chasing barreled right through his neighbor’s lawn and around his truck.
"I’m glad I wasn’t cutting my grass on my lawnmower,” Krawulski said.
You could see the tread marks at the edge of a house that went back toward the tree line. Witnesses say the car didn’t stop until the driver hit a tree and bailed, leaving the little girl behind.
"She was crying and screaming, and she was saying, 'I told him to stop, I told him to stop,'" Krawulski said.
News 5 Investigators tracked down the child’s mother by phone. She says the driver is an old friend who was supposed to drop off her 8-year-old daughter at her grandma’s house after picking up food.
The mom says her daughter used an iPad to call her from the back seat.
She says she doesn’t know what her friend was thinking.
"He must’ve been running from something, like I don’t know what he was afraid of, something,” witness Cynthia Tychan said.
When the chase got to Stanley Avenue, neighbors believe it could have ended a lot worse.
"Today I just found out they’re not dead,” Tychan said
Tychan watched it unfold from her front door.
“He went around and then went down the hill so fast,” Tychan said.
What bothers Krawulski the most, he says, is not enough punishment for people who run from the police.
"They should pull the license for life,” Krawulski said. “If he had killed my grandson or me, he wouldn't have had no remorse and what would come of it just me dead,” Krawulski said.
Police have not released any body camera video, saying charges are pending.
