Wilmington police officer Richard Matthews speeds down Shipyard Boulevard on his way to assist a fellow officer.
Suddenly, a small, white box appears in the center lane of Shipyard.
He swerves to his left, clipping the box.
His patrol car dips into the grassy median and his camera shuts off.
Another officer, Allison Jahreis, follows Matthews’ car from a distance.
It suddenly veers to the left, and the blue lights disappear.
She drives through a thin tuft of smoke before pulling up to Matthews’ car, wedged in the trees.
“I need EMS,” Jahreis says calmly at first, then with increasing urgency as she struggles to get Matthews out of his patrol car.
“I can’t get him out! I can’t get him out!” Jahreis shrieks with increasing panic.
“It’s Richard Matthews, and I can’t get him out!”
When other officers arrive on scene, one tries to break a thin tree to access the passenger side of the car.
The scenes relating to Matthews’ death and the preceding chase were pieced together from video footage in different police cars.
The footage was released in response to a lawsuit filed by the Star-News against the city, county and Wilmington police.
Matthews died Feb. 18 when he crashed his patrol car on his way to assist another officer chasing three drug suspects.
The chase shows a GMC Yukon pulling over for a brief moment before accelerating and fleeing Cpl. Will Richards around College and Oleander.
When it finally stops after packages of what authorities believe was marijuana came flying out of the vehicle, Richards yells: “Step out of the car! Put your hands up! Put ‘em up! Get out of the car now! Do not move! Face down!”
A Wilmington police crash report lists Matthews’ speed at the time of the crash as unknown.
Deputy Chief David Conklin said Matthews was exceeding the 50 mph speed limit, but would not disclose the officer’s exact speed.
“We’ll release all that after we finish dealing with putting our criminal case together,” Conklin said.
Three men are in jail on drug charges, and the driver, Anthony Pierce, a 40-year-old convicted felon, also faces a charge of felony fleeing to elude arrest.
Matthew Gerard Hendy, 26, and Eric Grant Smith, 25, face marijuana charges.
Before the crash, Matthews was the nearest officer to Richards, who was trying to stop the fleeing vehicle, so Matthews was driving to assist him, Conklin said.
The city released seven DVD recordings that show patrol car recordings from Matthews, Richards and Jahreis, who pulled up to Matthews after the wreck.
The video releases come two weeks after Matthews’ death and after days of legal wrangling for the records.
Still unresolved is the issue of whether police patrol car video recordings are public records.
The city agreed to turn over the videos relating to Matthews’ crash after a Superior Court judge watched them in his chambers.
Attorneys for the Star-News agreed to argue the public records request at a later date because the city decided to release the videos.
Assistant City Attorney Bill Wolak argued that the video recordings relating to Matthews’ death are not public record.
The hearing was in response to a civil lawsuit the Star-News filed seeking release of the video recordings, police radio transmissions and data from any onboard electronic recording devices related to the incident.
The newspaper argued that the state’s Public Records Act required prompt disclosure of public material – in this case, the radio transmissions relating to the crash as well as the patrol car videotapes.
Police Chief Ralph Evangelous issued a statement after the release of the video recordings saying the police department goes above and beyond to comply with open records requests.
“All that this agency asked of the Star-News was to be patient while all the material was reviewed and documented as part of the ongoing criminal and administrative investigations,” the statement read.
“Ideally, the members of this Police Department would have more time to reach closure and begin the healing process before being subjected to constant replaying of videotapes from the events of February 18th.
But we released the tapes to end the pointless controversy.”
