Late Thursday night, what started as a chaotic parking lot spectacle in north Houston turned into a full-blown police pursuit clocking over 100 miles per hour before fizzling out in one of the most anticlimactic ways possible: a red Dodge Charger coasting to a stop in a Popeyes parking lot because it ran out of gas.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded around 10:45 p.m. to reports of a parking lot takeover near the intersection of Interstate 45 and Greens Road, not far from the site of the former Greenspoint Mall. What deputies found was not a small gathering. Sgt. John Carroll with the Sheriff’s Office Traffic Crimes Unit told OnScene TV that somewhere between 100 and 150 vehicles had descended on the lot, with drivers doing donuts and, in his words, “crazy stuff.”
Greenspoint, a part of Houston that has seen decades of economic decline since its mall closed, is no stranger to large, unsanctioned gatherings. But even by local standards, a triple-digit vehicle convoy tearing up a parking lot at nearly midnight is the kind of thing that tends to draw attention fast. Deputies arrived, and that’s when the night took its next turn…