A suspected drunk driver was arrested after leading police on a high speed vehicle chase through Mendenhall Valley on Tuesday morning and side-swiping a marked police car.
The approximately eight-minute-long vehicle chase ended with the suspect losing control of his pickup truck and crashing it into a tree in a front yard in a residential neighborhood a little after 11 a.m.
Devin Moorhouse, 26, who police say was drunk at the time, was taken to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries. He was then jailed on multiple felony and misdemeanor charges, including failure to stop at the direction of a police officer, assault and driving while intoxicated.
Police said in a release the chase began when Moorhouse almost struck a marked police car while making an illegal lane change on Egan Drive outbound near McDonald’s.
The officer positioned himself behind Moorhouse’s 1991 red Chevy truck to perform a traffic stop. Police said Moorhouse failed to stop and ran through the red light at Egan Drive and Mendenhall Loop Road.
Moorhouse then turned on to Riverside Drive, and he ran a second red light at the Mall Road intersection, according to a release. Juneau Police Department Lt. David Campbell said Moorhouse had accelerated to such a high rate of speed, the pursuing officer terminated the chase.
“At JPD we have guidelines that the officers use if they’re going to determine if they’re going to pursue somebody or not,” Campbell said in an interview, adding the weather, traffic and seriousness of the crime are some of those factors. “In this case, once he had passed the second stoplight .. he accelerated to a speed that the officer believed was an unjustifiable risk to people in the area.”
Two school zones are near that area, and the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour, Campbell added.
Another police officer picked up Moorhouse’s location again about three or four minutes later when he observed the Chevy fail to stop for a third red light while crossing Loop Road, from Mendenhall Boulevard onto Valley Boulevard.
Police said Moorhouse continued to fail to stop for officers, and side-swiped a police car, causing a couple hundred dollars worth of damage.
“No police officers were injured, and very minor damage to the police car,” Campbell said.
The Chevy crossed back onto Mendenhall Boulevard and turned onto Aspen Avenue, a residential neighborhood. At the intersection of Portage Boulevard, police say Moorhouse lost control and struck a tree.
On scene, a responding police officer was seen confiscating a bottle of liquor and pouring its contents out onto the ground.
Police and medics tended to a 33-year-old female passenger in the truck. Her name was not released. Police said she complained of pain, was evaluated on scene by medics, then decided she didn’t want to be taken to a hospital.
Campbell said if Moorhouse would have stopped for the first police officer near McDonald’s, he would probably only be facing misdemeanor drunken driving and driving while license revoked charges.
Instead, Moorhouse was slapped with two counts of first-degree failure to stop at the direction of a police officer, third-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal mischief, in addition to the two misdemeanor charges.
“Yes, he was intoxicated and driving revoked, but by running from the police and getting caught ... he made the situation much worse not only for the general public with his reckless actions but for himself with what he has to face in the future,” Campbell said.
“I think the lesson is that when you run from the police, you exacerbate the problems of whatever you’re going to be stopped for,” Campbell added.
Campbell said he did not know why Moorhouse’s license was revoked.
Online court records indicate Moorhouse was charged with driving under influence and reckless endangerment in 2006, but those charges were dismissed.
He was also charged with felony burglary in 2004, and served jail time in connection to that case, according to online court records.
• Contact reporter Emily Russo Miller at 523-2263 or at emily.miller@juneauempire.com.
Comments (16)
Add commentrelated..
It's on KINY -- they are related. The chase and the crash.
alcohol
Alcohol is destroying this town. This is definitely something that we need to address.
I do not drink a drop of alcohol and I could not be more proud of that.
It's not the alcohol that is
It's not the alcohol that is destroying the town, it's the idiots who can't tolerate alcohol that is the problem here. Juneau isn't destroyed , just ask the people who last week said dog crap was destroying Juneau . Maybe there just needs to be stiffer penalties when it comes to alcohol related crimes? I for one, can have a beer, glass of wine or a mixed drink and behave just fine, follow the rules. In fact it's nice to have a drink every once in a while. So, what would you bradjohnson suggest the city do about alcohol?
alcohol
First off, I'm glad no one was killed by this moron. Throw away the key on him.
Now, regarding alcohol, you make a fair point, Wild Alaskan. I too enjoy a drink once in awhile, and I don't run amok with my car or beat people up downtown. Holding people accountable for their actions is reasonable.
But the cost of doing that is very high. More cops cost money. So do more courts and prosecutors and judges and prisons... So how do we pay for this enforcement?
Let alcohol pay for it. Add on an additional stiff alcohol tax, the proceeds to be earmarked toward enforcement, education, and treatment. I'm thinking a 33% tax. For you and me, who might have a couple beers or an occasional glass of wine or mixed drink, the total added cost will be low. For the heavy drinkers, the ones who create most of the problems, they'll be the ones paying for the solution.
I couldn't agree with you
I couldn't agree with you more Latitude. Raise the alcohol tax. I dont drink enough for it to affect me.
Instead of fines and jail time being reduced because of plea bargains, have it be a solid fine and or jail for the first offense , second offense and so on. No suspended jail time and suspended fines for any and all alcohol offenses. Drunk in public?, you get fined. Drunk driving? Jail time and a fine, etc.
The thing that got me was that this happened in the middle of the afternoon. It certainly isn't something I would think to be cautious of on a Tuesday afternoon.
This punk has been in trouble
This punk has been in trouble enough times and has shown a total disregard for the law and a total lack of concern for other people. He needs to do some serious time. Ship him out of town to the facility where they keep hardcore offenders. I hope the judicial system won't cop out on its duty and come down hard on this sorry excuse for a human being.
Alcohol is not...
destroying this town. In fact, it's quite a nice town, one I'm proud to live in. A fairly constant percentage of people DO negatively impact their lives in a huge way, some even to the point of destruction, because of their misconduct involving alcohol. This isn't a condition unique to Juneau. Perhaps a first time offense needs to be a minimum of 7 days instead of 3 days, and similarly increase the second offense incarceration, along with increasing the fines. The 3rd offense is stiff enough, and a felony. I could care less about the fella who's so proud that he's a tea-totaler - has no bearing on the article. One thing I'm not in favor of is draconian over-reaching in the name of solving a problem that can't be legislated away. Alcohol tax already is high for these reasons, and funds dedicated to law enforcement, treatment, etc. Going overboard and penalizing the majority who drink responsibly by imposing cuckoo iron-boot 30+ percent tax increase is an emotional knee-jerk reaction, that far too many resort to over one issue or another.
Yes, Grim, draconian
Yes, Grim, draconian punishments have ALWAYS worked, why shouldn't they now?
It astonishes me that your average person would be so ignorant of history and human behavior. And then I realize that half of all people are less intelligent than average.
wolfmagic
Just take a sampling of the crimes reported on in Juneau over the past few weeks. In how many of them were alcohol a factor?
I think this is a fine town too, and am proud to live here, but that doesn't mean we don't have problems. Substance abuse is a significant problem, and it's an expensive one for the community.
Alcohol already has a tax. You allege that the tax is dedicated toward law enforcement and treatment. Is that really the case?
I would suggest that the tax be on a sliding scale, adjusted annually. For each crime or incident where alcohol is deemed to be a factor, the tax goes up. As abuse decreases, the tax goes down. Maybe 10% is the right number - I don't know.
Another option: Base the tax on location. In areas where alcohol incidences are high, liquor stores and bars located near there pay a higher tax.
If you drink so much that this tax would impose a severe hardship, I would suggest that you carefully evaluate your alcohol consumption.
Glad the System Works
"Online court records indicate Moorhouse was charged with driving under influence and reckless endangerment in 2006, but those charges were dismissed."
Intelligence
non sequitur, kinda.....PP said, "I realize that half of all people are less intelligent than average."
This is true only if the median person is below the average mark, otherwise half of all people are more intelligent than average, except in the very unlikely case where the median person's intelligence is exactly equal to the average intelligence.
Thank you for your time, this board will now resume its public bashing of this idiot (or in some posts, the judicial system).
Wow, 39 points!
Last time I looked, I only had 9 points!
To all of you other posters...YOUR DEFENSE SUCKS! I've put up three touchdowns (with extra points) and three field goals in such a short amount of time!
I'm guessing I'll score a few more times before I even snap the ball for the next play (click the "save comment" button).
@bigtall: a median is a type
@bigtall: a median is a type of average which is useful when there are extreme outliers that skew the mean average one way or another. In terms of IQ, 100 is the median, meaning that half (OR HALF PLUS/MINUS ONE) of all people fall below that mark and half fall above.
But really, my point wasn't meant to be an exact measure of the world's intelligence, but an attack on a very stupid idea (harsher punishments work, which is why crime didn't exist when punishments were harsher in the past, DERP!) and an explanation of why I drink.
I know what a median is
A median is not "a type of average" at all!
A median is not "a type of average". A median is a point, a mid-point to be exact, meaning exactly half are below and exactly half are above (or the median is the point in the exact middle, if there are an odd number of points). You are correct that it is used when extremes skew the average one way or another.....but a median is in no way an average. Also, there is no such thing as a "mean average", unless you're saying that Derek Jeter currently has a mean average at the plate (which he does). When you say "mean average", you're basically saying "average average".
But you currently have more points than me right now. So, I need to have a talk with my defense and maybe make some adjustments to my playbook.
Enough non sequitur talk, back to bashing alcoholic idiots and light-sentencing court systems.
What the hell am I doing being the comment nit-picker! I need a drink!
In statistics a median and a
In statistics a median and a mean are both a type of average. In a perfectly normal distribution, the median and mean will be the same, but in real life, they're usually somewhat different (but not typically by much), and so we usually go with the mean unless there are significant outliers, in which case we might use the median or a weighted mean or a trimmed mean.
In common usage, we do mean the "mean" when we talk about averages, but an "average" is really just a measure of the middle value in a string of data, of which there are different kinds, with the median being one of them, and the other types of means I listed above also being kinds of averages.