Camden Police Officer Recovering After Wild Police Chase

A Camden police officer is in the hospital in stable condition, after a wild police chase that began Tuesday morning with his police cruiser. 

It should have been a routine traffic stop, right in front of Camden's Police Administration building.  A Jeep had just made an illegal right on red at an intersection a block away.  "We just got pulled over down the street," Fred Hoover, a passenger in the Jeep, told Fox 29.  "We must have run the red light.  So the police officer pulled us over, and he was talking to her."  A conversation he never got to finish.  

Minutes later, Officer Sekou Reid-Bey lay on a gurney, ready to be rushed to the hospital, a victim of a hit-and-run, struck by his own police car.  "They accelerated right through the officer," Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson explained.  "He ended up going up, over the hood, and flipped down onto the ground."

The 16-year-veteran of the Camden Police force had left his keys in his patrol car, which is standard protocol according to the police chief.  When Reid-Bey heard his car door slam, he ran back toward the vehicle.  "The officer went up over the hood of the car," Chief Thomson said.  "At that point in time, after he hit the ground he was able to get on his radio, let us know that his vehicle was stolen, that he was hit by a car."

Fred Hoover was stunned at how the traffic stop ended.  "The police officer just got run over by the, by somebody that robbed his car.  The car was behind us, then all of a sudden they must have stole the car and ran over the police officer."

The 49-year-old officer suffered a fractured leg, but no question it could have been far worse.  "He was hit head-on by the vehicle," Chief Thomson told Fox 29.  "Fortunately the vehicle, he was so close to it, it didn't have that much time to accelerate."