An Illinois man was sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to flee from a police officer, driving with the officer on the hood, and propelling him into a ditch during a frightening encounter in Iowa.
Dennis Guider Jr. was a wanted fugitive when Carroll Police Officer Patrick McCarty approached his vehicle and said there was an open warrant for his arrest from the neighboring state of Illinois. The encounter escalated as Guider refused to comply with the officer’s orders, eventually getting back into the car and trying to drive off.
Caught in the middle, the officer jumped onto the hood of the car as the fugitive hit the gas. The entire ordeal was captured on video, revealing a terrifying few seconds for the officer as he struggled to remain safe from an untold number of harms.
Unfortunately, Guider’s erratic behavior translated into erratic driving and he soon crashed the car into a ditch. McCarty was subsequently thrown from the hood of the vehicle and broke his back after colliding with the ground. Guider is said to have reached 50 miles per hour.
Guider later said in a court hearing that he feared for his life once he saw McCarty unholster his firearm. Of course, he likely never would have seen the officer’s gun had he complied with the lawful orders – or avoided the outstanding warrant in the first place.
The Des Moines Register reported that “Dennis James Guider Jr., 29, of Chicago Heights, pleaded guilty to serious injury by vehicle, a felony, and was recently sentenced to up to five years in prison. A felony eluding charge was dismissed as part of a plea agreement.”
The Register went on to describe how the officer’s initial recounting of the encounter differed from the evidence seen in the video, writing:
McCarty, a young officer who had worked for the Carroll Police Department for about four years before the incident, took nearly a year to fully recover from his injury, he said. He was away from work for a little more than three months.
The police department’s initial recounting of the incident indicated that McCarty had been struck by Guider’s car before he went onto its hood. And McCarty told a local radio station that Guider quickly accelerated, “forcing me onto the vehicle itself.”
“That appears to be contradicted by the officer’s body camera footage, which shows the car moving slowly when McCarty stepped onto the hood,” the Register followed up.
In any event, this scumbag deserves to be behind bars. He should also feel blessed that the officer didn’t follow through on his multiple threats to discharge his weapon. Most cops likely wouldn’t have shown such constraint, but given that McCarty is white and Guider Jr is black, one wonders if race didn’t factor into his decision to withhold from firing.
After all, the tinder box has been lit and cops never know, nor do they want to be, the next high-profile person to land behind bars for executing judgment during a tense interaction with criminals.
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded YouTube video.
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