An 18-year-old Plainfield man has been detained after prosecutors said he drove into Chicago police officers not once, not twice, but three separate times, injuring five cops and knocking one of them unconscious as they tried to disperse a massive street gathering on the Near West Side early Sunday. When Rashad Johnson’s car finally came to a crashing halt, officers pulled him from the vehicle and allegedly found a loaded Mac 10 pistol in his waistband.
According to Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Rausch, a large number of CPD officers were deployed near Roosevelt Road and South Loomis Street around 2:54 a.m. Sunday to disperse a crowd of several hundred people. Officers lined the east side of Loomis and the south side of Roosevelt, Rausch said, and the westbound lanes of Roosevelt were blocked by marked squad cars with their lights activated.
Johnson was driving a Ford Fusion westbound on Roosevelt Road with two passengers, both of whom prosecutors say later refused to cooperate with the investigation. As he approached the intersection, he veered into oncoming traffic, and a squad car with its lights and sirens activated tried to stop him from continuing, Rausch said. Johnson allegedly slowed nearly to a crawl, then accelerated and turned south onto Loomis, driving up onto the curb and striking the first officer, who suffered leg, knee, hip, and back pain and a possible torn meniscus…