A man who led Orange police and other agencies on a three-county high-speed chase is in intensive care at Beaumont hospital after swallowing “a quantity of methamphetamine,” said Detective Captain Robert Enmon.
During the chase, the driver hit a patrol vehicle that had gotten in front to try to slow him down, Enmon said. Lieutenant Eric Ellison was driving the patrol vehicle. He was not hurt and the vehicle had minor damage.
The chase, which began about 11 a.m. Wednesday, weaved across roads in Orange and Jasper counties at speeds past 100 miles per hour before ending in Jasper County.
Captain Enmon said 30-year-old Jeffrey LaPoint of Orange was arrested and taken to the Orange County Jail. Before he could be booked, he went “into medical distress,” Enmon said. The man had swallowed a “fistful of methamphetamine” during the chase. Acadian Ambulance took him to Baptist Hospital Orange Emergency Room and then to Baptist in Beaumont where he is in ICU.
The event began on Cochran Street off 37th Street to the west of the Ridgemont subdivision. Sergeant Howard DeVault went to the house to check complaints about suspicious activity. Captain Enmon said a man ran out the back of the house and a man jumped into a pickup truck and drove away.
Officer L.A. Lovelace followed the truck on 37th Street and used his lights and sirens to get the driver to stop. Instead, the driver began to speed away. Other officers joined the chase.
Captain Enmon said the chase went from 37th Street and took Womack Road to Highway 62 North to Buna, then onto Highway 96. The chase went off Highway 96 to FM 1004 in Jasper County. It ended in Call Junction.
Lieutenant Ellison at one point managed to get in front of the truck in attempt to slow it down to protect other motorists. That’s when the pickup truck hit the patrol vehicle in the rear. Both vehicles were damaged but the chase continued.
Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office tried to stop the chase with road spikes, but the pickup driver avoided them by running off the roadway.
The chase ended when the truck went off the roadway in the Call Junction area.
Captain Enmon said LaPoint had four arrest warrants issued for misdemeanors out of the cities of Vidor and West Orange and apparently had the methamphetamine with him.
He will face felony charges of aggravated assault of a police officer in connection with hitting the patrol vehicle and evading arrest.
Captain Enmon said a man was arrested at the Cochran Street house on a warrant for possession of a controlled substance. Police searched the house and did not find anything illegal, he said.
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