Indiana police say that a 14-year-old boy who had run away from home died at the end of a high-speed police chase.
A news release from the Ashley-Hudson Police Department says that the incident started when officers saw a “suspicious vehicle” in a residential area of Ashley, a small town about 60 miles southeast of South Bend, late in the evening on April 19.
When police officers got close to the car, the driver took off and broke several traffic laws, police said.
A traffic stop was then tried nearby, but the car took off again, sending cops on a late-night chase through fields and farmhouses on a rural road.
Police say that the fleeing car sped up and reached about 90 miles per hour before entering Hamilton, the next town over.
Once the car got to Hamilton, it turned around and went back the way it came. It then hit a tree and caught fire, police said.
Officers didn’t try to save the driver because the fire was so hot, cops said. Then they found out that the car had supposedly been stolen.
The Steuben County Coroner’s Office looked into the crash, and on May 3, they used DNA evidence to figure out who the driver was. He ran away from home when he was 14 years old.
The boy’s name has not been made public, and when McClatchy News asked for a statement from the coroner’s office, a representative did not answer right away.
A Facebook post from his mother says that a 14-year-old boy called Jaden Bowman went missing on April 19. His phone showed that he might have been on his way to Ashley.
His mother told everyone on May 3 that her son had died by sharing a link to a GoFundMe page asking for money to pay for Bowman’s funeral.
“My heart is broken to hear about my missing student this morning,” an Indiana woman wrote in a Facebook post that linked to the Ashley-Hudson police press release.
“I can still see him making fun of the other boys on the bus and laughing,” she said. “Everyone liked his laugh. We miss you so much!”
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