By Ashley Jost and Kristen Taketa St. Louis Post-Dispatch
UPDATED at 5:30 p.m. with more information about chase and collision.
ST. LOUIS, MO • Two people were killed and another was critically injured Thursday afternoon in a fiery, three-vehicle head-on crash that occurred during a police pursuit, authorities said.
County Police officers pursued the car into the city from north county. A county department spokesman said its officers had been looking for the car since Monday, when they detected a live streamed social media video showing its occupants with handguns.
The crash occurred shortly before 3 p.m. on Riverview Boulevard at Edna Street, one block east of the Halls Ferry Circle. Police said the Chevrolet Impala being pursued was speeding the wrong way on Riverview and crashed head-on into an oncoming SUV. The impact pushed the SUV into a parked pickup truck, and the Impala and caught fire. The fire quickly spread to the other two vehicles.
St. Louis County Police Sgt. Shawn McGuire confirmed that a pursuit by one or more county police cars began about three miles north in an unincorporated neighborhood near Chambers and Halls Ferry roads. A city Fire Department spokesman confirmed that two people were killed in the crash.
A man in the SUV was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition. Firefighters put a blue tarp over the burned Impala that contained the bodies of the two dead men.
That vehicle was wanted by police because they had seen four armed people in the car in a live video on social media on Monday, McGuire said. Authorities sent out an intelligence bulletin with the car’s Georgia license plate and names and photos of the suspects.
A police officer saw the car parked near Ventura and Bella Clare drives in Jennings and waited, McGuire said. When men left a residence and got in the car, the officer tried to pull it over, but the car sped away, he said.
The officer pursued the Impala on Chambers Road and south on Halls Ferry Road, where the Impala turned left the wrong way onto the circle and then north in the southbound lanes of Riverview, McGuire said. The car collided with an oncoming vehicle.
Peggy McNutt, who lives on Riverview a few doors from the wreck scene, said she looked out her kitchen window and saw the car speeding the wrong way and pursued by a police car. McNutt said she went outside and saw the wrong-way car collide head-on with an oncoming vehicle.
Riverview is a divided street with a grass median at that location.
McNutt said police officers were approaching the wreck with pistols drawn when the pursued car exploded.
“It blew up,” McNutt said. “Blew up like, boom.”
She said police officers pulled the man out of the other vehicle. His legs were on fire, she said, and officers extinguished the flames by rolling the victim in the median.
She said fire spread to the second vehicle and a parked pickup that also was struck during the wreck. McNutt said there were several more explosions before firefighters extinguished the blaze.
McGuire said that department policy requires officers to obtain approval from supervisors to continue pursuits. He did not say whether the pursuing officer had done so.
“I’m not going to have the answers right now on whether it’s a good pursuit or not,” McGuire said. “I just want you guys to know that it’s under investigation ... an internal investigation.”
Doug Hollis of St. Louis, who said he was driving behind the SUV on Riverview and witnessed the collision, asked McGuire during the press conference why police couldn’t have used another way to detain the wanted men.
“You’re endangering lives here,” Hollis said to police of the pursuit.
Tim O’Neil of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.