SOUTH FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — A south Fulton County man is facing several charges after police say he refused to pull over for officers and crashed his car into a gas station.
Witnesses told Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes the car had been speeding down Old National Highway when the driver tried to take a corner too fast and lost control. The car flipped over and then crashed into a pole and caught on fire.
Hallu Eshet was working inside a Shell gas station on Old National Highway on Monday morning when he heard tires screech and then a crash.
He told Fernandes he went outside and saw that the car had crashed into his sign, and then the car caught fire. Luckily, the driver hadn't crashed into the gas pumps.
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“This is strange. I don't know what's going on,” Eshet said.
Police said the incident wasn't a police chase, as witnesses had originally thought.
Investigators said a female officer had been attempting to pull over the driver of the car for an expired tag when the unlicensed driver had not stopped.
“I just heard the brakes of the car sliding, so it was like 'errrr' and then a big boom,” one witness who asked not to be identified, told Fernandes.
The witness said one of the men in the car had been ejected and had landed in a ditch.
“He was facedown, lying in the ditch, for quite a while. They left him there for quite a while,” the witness said.
Police detained two men in the car, and they arrested the driver and charged him with attempting to elude an officer, failure to register the vehicle, obedience to traffic control device, and driving with a suspended license.
Witnesses told Fernandes they are relieved that the car crashed into the sign instead of the gas pumps.
“It would've (blown) up, because the car caught on fire,” a witness said.
Police aren't releasing the name of the driver yet but they did tell Fernandes that the passenger in the car was a licensed driver.
Cox Media Group
