Car hit 114 mph before fatal police pursuit crash, throwing driver from fiery wreck

VAN BUREN COUNTY, MI -- A police analyst estimated a car was going 114 mph during a police pursuit in Southwest Michigan before it skidded into a tree and exploded, killing the driver.

The crash occurred on Feb. 10 on County Road 681, the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office said.

The moments leading up to the fiery crash that killed Jose G. Gonzalez Gutierrez are detailed in a police report MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

It started when Deputy Andrea Walker was westbound on Territorial Road and radar alerted her to an oncoming vehicle, a 2003 Toyota Camry, speeding in a 55 mph zone.

“Once it reached a speed of 67 mph, I turned around in order to initiate a traffic stop,” Walker wrote.

As she started following the Camry, Walker saw it did not have a license plate, her report says.

“Prior to the intersection, I activated my overheads to initiate a traffic stop,” Walker wrote.

The driver did not stop.

“When the vehicle did not immediately pull over, I toggled my siren on and off a few times; however, the vehicle did not stop,” the deputy wrote. “Instead, it rolled through the stop sign at the intersection and made a left turn onto County Road 681. At that point, I activated my siren and continued to follow it, still attempting to alert the driver to pull over.”

That sequence of events is different than the narrative in the news release the department issued on March 12, more than a month after the fatal crash. That release said the officer attempted a traffic stop after the Camry ran the stop sign.

A portion of the chase before the fatal crash is shown on a dash camera obtained by MLive through FOIA. The dash camera video shows the officer’s flashing lights on as the car rolls past the intersection and stop sign.

The officer gave chase and wrote, “Initially, we reached speeds of 90 mph,” and the Toyota went over 100 mph, crossing the centerline multiple times during the pursuit.

“Despite the increasingly hilly roadway, the vehicle continued northbound at a high rate of speed,” the officer wrote.

Over one of those hills, the deputy briefly saw headlights turned in the wrong direction.

Moments later, the car crashed and was burning as the deputy pulled up. The deputy searched for the driver, who had been ejected and was found face down nearby with a serious head injury. He was dead, she wrote.

Items in the debris field included broken Modelo beer bottles and a half pint of vodka with some liquid still inside, the report said.

Michigan State Police Trooper Maxwell Miniat attempted to use facial recognition and a fingerprint scanner, but neither were able to determine the man’s identity.

A sheriff’s office lieutenant calculated the car was going 114 mph. All four tires were skidding, the analyst wrote, measuring tire marks about 736 feet long.

Gutierrez had a .261 blood-alcohol content, more than three times the legal limit of .08. He had no other substances in his system, according to an autopsy, the police report says.

Gutierrez was ejected through the passenger window as the spinning car hit two trees. He was launched about 40 feet as the car burst into flames.

Speed and alcohol appear to be factors in the crash, Walker wrote.

The Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office did not to call an outside agency to investigate the pursuit crash, as indicated in an email MLive received through FOIA.

“No need for an outside agency,” Captain Jim Charon said in an email sent after 2 a.m. the night of the crash to Sheriff Daniel Abbott and others. “Sounds like single vehicle and the single occupant is a K. Car is burnt to frame.”

It is up to the local agency or sheriff’s office to call and request MSP to investigate an incident involving one of their members, said MSP Public Information Officer Spl/Lt. DuWayne Robinson.

“We would have investigated the (Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office) Feb. 10 incident had they requested,” Robinson said.

It is common for agencies to call in MSP for such cases.

In another unrelated case, MSP was immediately called in to investigate an April 23 pursuit crash that killed a 16-year-old in Barry County. A news release was sent within hours, without the 16-year-old’s name included.

MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette has reached out to the Van Buren County Sheriff’s office to ask how the agency determines when to call in an outside agency, among other questions.

Memorial on County Road 681 — A memorial was placed at the base of a tree where a man died during a crash that happened during a police pursuit. The sheriff's office did not release information about what happened in the crash until a month after it occurred. (Brad Devereaux | bdeverea@mlive.com)(Brad Devereaux | bdeverea@mlive.com)

It took the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office more than a month to notify the public of the incident, putting out a press release March 12 — after weeks of inquiries from MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette.

Police initially said a news release was not completed at the time of the crash because officials were unable to initially identify the driver. The police report shows the driver’s next-of-kin was contacted the night of the crash, however.

An internal investigation of the pursuit crash was carried out by the sheriff’s department, Lt. Tony Evans said in an interview about a month after the crash. The deputy involved in the pursuit remained on the job.

The crash happened weeks before the Michigan State Police updated its pursuit policy, which restricts MSP troopers’ use of pursuits to only when there is probable cause that the driver or occupants of a fleeing vehicle have committed a life-threatening or violent felony.

Law enforcement agencies such as sheriff’s offices often have their own pursuit policy. MLive requested the department’s policy through FOIA and has inquired if any recent changes were made to the policy.

Per state police, crashes occur in at least 30% of pursuits nationwide, with injuries or fatalities occurring in 5% to 17% of police chases.

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