A woman who’s alleged to have stolen a pick-up truck and also hit a police officer with it was arrested after a stretched out chase that took place in Worcester, Massachusetts on Tuesday morning, ABC News reports.
It all ended in a McDonald’s drive-thru.
Shortly before 9 a.m., officers were alerted to a scene that involved a restoration company pick-up being stolen. The owner of said truck said he saw a woman get in and take off.
The truck had GPS which made it easy to locate. An officer initially pulled over the woman, later ID’ed as 38-year-old Johanna Gardell, but she drove off again.
“The officer activated his blue lights, got out of his cruiser, and approached the stolen vehicle,” said Worcester P.D. in a statement. “The operator … drove away as the officer walked toward her. The officer got back into his cruiser and followed her at a low rate of speed, but she did not stop. Ms. Gardell began to increase her speed on Main St. and drove through red lights. The officer deactivated his lights and sirens and stopped following her for safety reasons.”
From there, Gardell is alleged to have gone into oncoming traffic where she hit a van. Two officers reportedly closed in on the truck, but Gardell backed it up and hit a cop car behind her. That same move also led to one of the officers getting hit and briefly dragged, according to WHDH. That officer was checked out for non-life-threatening injuries but is said to be okay.
As already mentioned, the whole thing ended when Gardell got hungry and went into a McDonald’s drive-thru to order food. She attempted to evade officers in that drive-thru when, according to police, she intentionally hit one of their cruisers. That collision caused her to go off-road and get the pick-up stuck in mulch that was on McDonald’s property.
She now has a lot of charges against her, including: failure to stop for police, operating to endanger, leaving the scene of an accident with personal injury, two counts of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, and use of motor vehicle without authority.
