EDGEWOOD, N.M. (KRQE) – It was a tense scene on the I-40 median in December, as Edgewood police officers closed in on the driver of a pickup truck. It started about 20 minutes earlier, when dispatch got a call about a pickup, crawling along at under 30 miles per hour on the interstate, with a man who appeared “out of it” behind the wheel. Dash camera video shows officers following the driver, later identified as Anthony Perea, still driving at a crawl along the shoulder. But instead of pulling over, he eventually got back in the traffic lanes and took off.
As more patrol cars joined the pursuit, one officer got ahead of Perea and threw out stop sticks. The pickup fishtailed before the driver regained control and kept going. But soon the truck slowed down, and officers caught up. One officer used his patrol car to perform a PIT maneuver, sending the pickup spinning into the median, where one of the officers reported seeing Perea still in the driver’s seat, drinking from a Jack Daniel’s bottle…