Two Men Arrested After Comm Ave Chase
Two officers injured; suspect flees through CAS
Brookline police arrest a man suspected of larceny in front of Radio Shack. Photo courtesy of WHDH and reporter Tim Caputo
Two men were arrested and a third escaped police yesterday afternoon after a chase down Commonwealth Avenue, in the middle of campus. One man was arrested after a scuffle with a Brookline police officer outside Radio Shack, at 730 Comm Ave, and another was apprehended at the footbridge over Storrow Drive after fleeing through the College of Arts & Sciences.
A posting on the Brookline Police Department website reports that at approximately 2 p.m., officers responded to a report that three males had taken a cell phone off the counter at the East Coast Alpine store, at 860 Comm Ave, and had run toward Kenmore Square. When police spotted the suspects at Radio Shack, the men fled. One suspect ran across Comm Ave and into CAS, exiting through a rear door, before being apprehended by Boston University Police behind the George Sherman Union. BUPD Sergeant Larry Cuzzi, who was on the scene, says the arresting officer was injured and was treated at the BU Occupational Health Center, at 930 Comm Ave. Brookline police report that another suspect was arrested outside Radio Shack, after a scuffle that injured an officer. Both the officer, who suffered a leg injury, and the suspect, who was hit with a Mace-like spray, were taken to Beth Israel Hospital.
Cuzzi says Brookline police were questioning the two men in custody, looking for information that would lead to the arrest of the third suspect.
Julia Butler (COM’12) was near Radio Shack when she saw two men burst through the doors with two officers in pursuit. “It took a second to realize what was going on,” says Butler. “When I did, I flattened myself against the wall. The guys were really trying to get away and the police were pretty vocal, telling them to get down. One guy ended up running down the street; I didn’t see where he went. The other guy was subdued, and an officer sprayed him with pepper spray. One officer fell in the road, and I went up to him and said, ‘Are you OK?’ He said he’d be all right. It looked like he had a tear in the knee of his pants.”
Rachel Tesler (COM’13) saw a police officer with an injured leg lying on the ground outside Radio Shack, while a suspect was on the ground being detained by two other officers. “The guy on the ground was screaming profanities,” Tesler says. “I heard that the guy on the ground had been Maced and he seemed very disoriented. It sounded like the cop and the guy were fighting violently.”
Tesler says she’s never seen anything like it. “It’s not something that happens here,” she says. “Normally BU is a pretty safe place.”
Leslie Friday and Amy Laskowski also contributed to this story.
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