Mall chase puts shoppers in danger

Dozens of Black Friday shoppers were in danger overnight, when a teenaged driver led police on a chase that went through a shopping mall parking lot in Kokomo.

The teenager's in custody, four Kokomo police cruisers are damaged and off the street, and those shoppers have an unusual story to tell the day after Thanksgiving.

The parking lot in front of the Target store at Kokom's Markland Mall was buzzing with activity midday Friday.  Dozens of people were here in the wee morning hours, too.

They were waiting for the store to open. "We were just all in line and all the sudden you hear the sirens going and stuff," said shopper Nancy Clark. "And then you just kind of turn around, and you see this car was just flying down the street."

Police say a teenaged driver was tearing through the Markland Mall parking lot in an SUV.  He was trying to elude officers.

It had all started at the corner of Union and Superior Streets, right outside City Hall and the Kokomo Police Department. Police say when the light turned red at that intersection, the teenaged driver blew through it. An officer pulled him over several blocks later.

"He engaged the driver in a conversation telling him that his taillights were not working and that sort of thing, and asked him to get out of the car," said Kokomo Police Lt. Don Whitehead. "And at that point the driver just took off."

Several police cars got involved in the chase. When the driver reached Markland Mall, police pulled back. They didn't want to hurt any of the shoppers waiting in line.  After it left the parking lot, the SUV ended up in a ditch between the lot and U.S. 31. The tracks it left were still visible Friday afternoon.

The SUV was able to get out of the ditch and then head south on U.S. 31. Police finally got the SUV to stop in a nearby neighborhood, by pinning it against a tree.

At the end, four Kokomo police cars were dented, chipped and cracked. But police know with all the shoppers who may have been in the path of the SUV driver, it could have been worse. Said Lt. Don Whitehead: "It could have been MUCH worse."