A 40-year-old Lakewood man allegedly fleeing from police was seriously hurt Saturday after his vehicle struck a tree and a retaining wall in Puyallup.
His female passenger also was injured. Both were taken to Tacoma General Hospital, police said.
The man was arrested on suspicion of vehicular assault, said Puyallup police Capt. Ryan Portmann. The man might have been under the influence of drugs, police said.
The incident began at 2:13 p.m., when an officer questioned the occupants of a vehicle in the parking lot of an apartment building on South Meridian Avenue. The officer suspected they’d been prowling cars at a nearby business, Portmann wrote in a news release.
But the driver “put the car in gear and fled the parking lot. While fleeing, the suspect vehicle nearly struck the officer,” Portmann wrote.
Another officer spotted the vehicle heading east on state Route 512 from 31st Avenue Southeast, Portmann wrote. As the officer tried to catch up, the driver got off the highway at South Meridian, lost control and crashed.
sara.schilling@ thenewstribune.com
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