EL DORADO, Kansas (AP) — Authorities say a woman who was fatally injured in a crash while being chased by the Kansas Highway Patrol on Wednesday had just fled the scene of a shooting.
The Butler County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to the shooting in rural Butler County around 10:30 a.m. The shooting victim was taken to a Wichita hospital with critical injuries.
The patrol said a trooper soon spotted the suspect’s pickup and a brief pursuit ensued. Trooper Chad Crittenden said the officer performed a maneuver using his vehicle to try to force the pickup to spin out and stop. The pickup then hit a sign in a business parking lot in the Wichita suburb of Bel Aire. The driver, a woman in her 60s, died at the scene. Her name has not been released.
Crittenden told reporters that the trooper tried to force the stop because the woman was a suspect in a shooting and was getting ready to travel into a highly populated part of northern Wichita. He said he didn’t know her hometown.
Details on the shooting in Butler County were not immediately released.
The patrol is investigating the crash, while the Butler County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the shooting.
