A pickup truck towing a trailer of pricey racing shells similar to canoes went on a wild ride Saturday night through Cambridge, chased by police until the driver was arrested on Blanchard Road along the Belmont-Cambridge line, police said Sunday.
Along the way, the driver of the truck – which was reported stolen to Arlington Police, officials said – collided with and heavily damaged at least three automobiles, including a Cambridge police cruiser, a bystander said. That was confirmed by department spokesperson Bob Reardon.
The cruiser was involved in a crash while responding to help stop the driver, Reardon said. An officer suffered nonlife-threatening injuries and was released by Sunday afternoon after treatment at a local hospital.
The pickup stolen, stolen from a parking lot at Spy Pond in Arlington at around 8:45 p.m., according to police there – is thought to have entered Cambridge along Route 2 at around 9 p.m., as police “received reports of hit-and-run crashes at multiple locations in West Cambridge, all involving a pickup truck towing a trailer of canoe boats,” Reardon said – a trailer of multiple eight-person crew boats belonging to Belmont and Arlington youth crew teams returning from a regatta, the bystander said.
“The driver drove down Aberdeen Avenue and turned around at the cutout by the library, where one of the boats fell onto the street,” the bystander said, citing scanner reports.
Reardon said the pickup was believed to be involved in a crash along Route 2 – a message left Sunday with State Police didn’t draw an immediate response – but in Cambridge “there were multiple reported crashes, including on Aberdeen Avenue, Fresh Pond Parkway, Walden Street and the rotaries where Concord Avenue and Fresh Pond Parkway and Alewife Brook Parkway meet.”
Cambridge, Belmont and state police as well as firefighters were “involved in the wild chase,” the bystander said.
When the vehicle was stopped on Blanchard, there was heavy police president as the driver was arrested, according to Reardon and the bystander.
As investigation goes on – involving multiple scenes and coordination with several partner agencies, Reardon said – the bystander said student rowers were able to gather some of the rowing gear, including oars, while the truck, trailer and crew boats were towed away.
The incident “destroyed most, if not all, of the 11 boats on the trailer,” said Salpi Der Stepanian, president of the board of directors of the Arlington-Belmont Crew Team.
Der Stepanian explained how the theft went down: “Following our normal practice, the truck and trailer were parked at our secluded facility near Spy Pond in Arlington after returning from a regatta that evening. The trailer was to be unloaded by team members at their practice on Monday. Shortly after the trailer was parked, the suspect stole the truck, with the trailer attached, and drove it up a wooded embankment and onto the Minuteman Bike Path before turning onto public streets.”
This would not have been the first boat dropped in Cambridge streets in the past year: Traffic was halted at at Cambridge and Third streets, East Cambridge, on July 27 when safety chains on a trailer failed and a 30-foot boat landed in the road.
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My grandfather was a county sheriff in the Midwest in the 1950s and he was sensible enough to ban police chases (for nonviolent stuff at least) as being more dangerous than they were worth. This seems like a case in point.
@AnotherGPparenton – my child witnessed the truck speeding down the bike path, just after it was stolen, before any chase started. I don’t think this is a case of a high speed chase by police leading to crashes.
Follow up to the last paragraph of the article…let’s not forget the boat on the Fitchburg Line Commuter Rail tracks last April! https://www.universalhub.com/2024/mustve-spilled-out-moat-fitchburg-line-train-hits
And we wonder why our prisons are so full.
@Barkolab, our prisons are not full of people stealing trailers full of boats. Federally, Drug charges are the most common offense for inmates. Massachusetts has the lowest incarceration rate out of any State, and our prison population is made up of people mostly convicted of violent offenses. Mississippi, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country, also has drug offenses as the most common in their prisons.
In other words, prisons in the US are full not because of theft and property damage like the case here, but largely due to non-violent drug offenses. We could absolutely crowd our prisons less if we treated non-violent offenses differently.