MOORHEAD - Maybe moments before the crash, a police officer here attempted to pull over the 19-year-old Moorhead man who died Tuesday when the stolen vehicle he was driving struck a grove of trees.
The police officer was pursuing the four-door gold sedan, reported stolen about 2 a.m. Tuesday from Dilworth, when the squad car experienced a failure.
Russell Dean Thompson III was found dead in a vehicle matching the stolen car's description about 11 hours after the officer spotted the car at 2:22 a.m.
The car had crashed into a grove of trees next to Drywall Supply Central at 3003 41st St. S., near the intersection of 34th Street and Old Highway 52 in Moorhead Industrial Park.
A video released Thursday by Moorhead police shows the stolen car approaching the officer's northbound vehicle in the wrong lane of 34th Street South.
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The officer then made a U-turn to follow the car, flipped on his overhead lights and accelerated to 61 mph before experiencing a mechanical failure that prevented further pursuit.
In the video, the officer loses sight of the vehicle as it travels south over the Interstate 94 overpass. The squad car continues on 34th Street South, passing the spot where police later discovered Thompson's vehicle left the roadway.
"You can see that there's no debris in the air. There's nothing of the vehicle to be seen," Lt. Tory Jacobson, Moorhead police public information officer, said Thursday.
The officer and backup continued to canvass the area in and around the industrial park.
While they searched, dispatch reported an attempted burglary at 1801 29th St. Circle S., a few blocks away from where the officer first spotted the vehicle. Police later discovered that the attempted burglary likely happened before the pursuit.
"The sequence isn't exactly the same, but after the fact you're able to do some Monday-morning quarterbacking and put the pieces together," Jacobson said.
Officers eventually quit their search after finding no sign of the stolen vehicle, he said.
Employees of an industrial park business found the vehicle, which had crashed through a fence, about 1:10 p.m. Tuesday.
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Police said the area where the car came to a stop was difficult to see from the roadway.
The incident is still under investigation, but a medical report released Wednesday indicated that Thompson died from injuries related to the crash.
The department released the video Thursday, "just to make sure there's isn't a misunderstanding of what the officer saw," Jacobson said.
Jacobson said information about the pursuit wasn't released until Thursday because police were waiting for some preliminary reports to confirm information.
"Certainly we know pieces of it, and our job is to put the whole puzzle together instead of throwing it out there and letting everybody speculate on all kinds of things," he said.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Heidi Shaffer at (701) 241-5511
