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An young man was driving a U-Haul truck in Marietta, GA Friday evening when police witnessed him run a traffic light. At that point, deputies turned on their lights with the intent to pull the man over and issue a citation however, the man decided to flee at the sight of police lights. The U-haul continued to hop curbs and run stop signs as it fled, the driver in obvious fear of some sort of retaliatory action.
The vehicle chase came to an end a few blocks down the road when the U-Haul collided, head on with a pickup truck. Before the large moving truck collided with the pick-up, the driver jumped out of the still moving vehicle and attempted to run. He was tased and taken into custody.
Shaddi Abusaid of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes from AJC:
"It’s unclear why Morris ran from police, but his arrest warrant indicates that he was driving on a suspended license and had a misdemeanor amount of marijuana in his pocket."
The current national statistics posted on drugpolicy.org indicates that despite making up just 31.5% of the total U.S. population, Blacks & Latinos account for a staggering 46.9% of all non-violent drug arrests. With this knowledge, it's not hard to see why this young man was so fearful of what could happen to him that his natural fight or flight reaction was activated.
The driver, 32 year old Avery Jerome Morris was charged with obstruction, reckless driving, driving on a suspended license, three counts failure to obey a traffic control device, backing up illegally, fleeing or attempting to elude police, marijuana possession and hit-and-run and remains in jail without bond.