Palm Beach Police arrest 3 in connection with weekend crash in Midtown
Three people are facing charges in connection with an early morning crash Saturday in Palm Beach that left a small scene of destruction in Midtown.
The three people — a 29-year-old Fort Lauderdale man, a 19-year-old West Palm Beach woman and a 36-year-old Fort Lauderdale man — were in a red Hyundai with another passenger that was stopped by Palm Beach police for speeding over the Royal Park Bridge just before midnight Saturday, according to arrest affidavits.
The police officer who pulled over the car could smell and see what looked like marijuana inside the car, the affidavits say. The officer asked the driver — the 36-year-old — and passengers to step out of the car. According to the reports, when the officer asked if there were weapons in the car, the driver sped away, driving south on Hibiscus Avenue.
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The officer pursued the Hyundai and found it traveling west in the 100 block of Worth Avenue. The Hyundai crashed into a pole but kept speeding west until it crashed into a stop sign and a wall at the intersection of Hibiscus and Peruvian avenues. All four people in the car ran, police said, prompting officers to set up a perimeter around Midtown.
Officers on the scene reported finding a 9 mm handgun on the ground outside the driver’s door of the Hyundai. They also found a 9 mm magazine with three rounds of ammunition on the passenger-side floorboard, the reports say.
The 29-year-old man was arrested after he called 911 from the 300 block of Hibiscus and told police dispatchers he had been in a crash, and that he had not done anything wrong, his arrest report states. He was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm or ammunition, loitering or prowling and resisting an officer without violence. He was released from Palm Beach County Jail on Sunday.
After the crash, the 19-year-old woman’s father called police to say she was running through yards on the island and had dropped her purse near a fence, her arrest report states. Police later arrested her as she tried to leave the island by walking over the Royal Park Bridge. She was charged with loitering or prowling and resisting an officer without violence, and released Saturday from jail.
The 36-year-old man who had been driving the Hyundai was arrested just after 7:30 a.m. Saturday. Police officers saw him walking east in the 100 block of Brazilian Avenue and when one tried to stop him, the man ran away, his arrest report states. The officer drove after him, but the man jumped over a nearby closed driveway gate. As police continued to look for him, a homeowner on the block called police to report the man was on her property. Police found the man hiding in the shower of the property’s guesthouse.
When he was arrested, officers noticed dust on the man’s arms and legs. He told officers he had been hiding in a nearby construction site, and officers determined it was a property in the 100 block of Royal Palm Way, records show. Soon after he was arrested, Palm Beach police received a call from another homeowner who said she had heard a noise and seen a shadow in her yard earlier that morning. She told police she later found that a door handle on the side of her house was broken. The man admitted he broke the door handle while running from police and looking for a place to hide, his arrest report states.
He faces charges including unarmed burglary of an occupied dwelling, unarmed burglary of an unoccupied dwelling, resisting an officer without violence, fleeing or eluding the police, leaving the scene of a crash and driving with a suspended license. He remained in jail Monday on $9,000 bond, records show.
The fourth person in the Hyundai was not arrested.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach Police: 3 arrested after fleeing car crashes in Midtown
