28-year-old man arrested after police chase ends in vehicle crashing into a building

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - A dramatic scene unfolded directly across from the WAFB studio in downtown Baton Rouge after a driver reportedly jumped from a moving vehicle during a police chase, causing a major crash.

According to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, Dedrick Weatherspoon, 28, was arrested and later charged.

Weatherspoon is facing a list of charges including aggravated flight from an officer, aggravated criminal damage to property, equipment violation, display of license plate, driving with suspended drivers license and failure to register vehicle.

An officer at the scene says the chase began as a routine traffic stop. Weatherspoon allegedly refused to stop and eventually bailed from the vehicle.

The vehicle then continued moving and crashed into the Rabenhorst Funeral Home located directly across from WAFB.

Along with damage to the building, the vehicle also hit a power pole, causing a temporary disruption to power service.

A footage from a security camera in the Channel 9 parking lot, watch now as a 28-year-old jumps from a moving vehicle as police chased him next to the television station late Thursday night. “I just seen him coming up the street. You know, it was about eight cop cars just following him. Next thing you knew, he ended up hitting the pole and run into the building,” says Darian Thomas who was incident last night.

Multiple power crews spent hours trying to get things repaired—even having to cut off power to many businesses in the area for a while. Those power interruptions might even last until tomorrow as more repairs are made. “You have a number of commercial businesses and other businesses out there and the impact of these facilities that’s why the repairs are going to take a lot longer into tomorrow because of the way the impact and the damage occurred as well as the type of equipment that was impact,” says David Freese who is a Spokesperson with Entergy Louisiana.

For crews to safely complete the repairs to electric equipment near the intersection of St. Joseph and Government, an outage has been scheduled for Saturday, July 10 around 8 a.m. It will last 4-5 hours and affect approximately 100 customers in the immediate area of the damaged equipment.

Again, we appreciate our customers’ patience as we work to make the repairs quickly and, above all, safely.

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