A police chase through Edgecombe County ended in tragedy Tuesday evening when an SUV fleeing Tarboro officers slammed into a tractor-trailer at the intersection of Dunbar Road and North Main Street, killing a 62-year-old passenger and injuring the truck driver. The suspect behind the wheel, wanted in connection with an armed robbery investigation, survived with non-life-threatening injuries.
According to the Rocky Mount Telegram, Tarboro Police Chief Rick Mann said officers responded to the Mobile Estates mobile home park at 6:41 p.m. after spotting a vehicle associated with 33-year-old Gabriel Manzanaris-Torres leaving the property. Officers attempted to stop the driver on Dunbar Road, but he fled instead, according to the outlet's report.
The pursuit was tied to a robbery investigation that began with a July 26 report of an armed robbery at Mobile Estates. Manzanaris-Torres was wanted on charges of robbery with a dangerous weapon and felony financial card theft, and authorities had already obtained arrest warrants for him before the chase began, per the same account.
Crash Northwest of Tarboro
The chase ended when the SUV failed to stop at the stop sign at Dunbar Road and North Main Street, colliding with a tractor-trailer traveling east on North Main Street northwest of Tarboro. The SUV came to rest on the roadway near the point of impact, while the tractor-trailer went off the roadway before coming to a stop, the report notes.
According to the N.C. Department of Transportation's Tarboro Bicycle Plan, dated Oct. 18, 2005, two out of six accidents discussed in the plan occurred on Main Street, which the document said lacked bicycle facilities.
Jeremia Castro, 62, was riding in the front seat of the Mazda SUV and died at ECU Health Medical Center in Greenville after the crash. The trauma center is the only Level I Adult Trauma Center in North Carolina east of Interstate 95, serving a 29-county rural region, according to East Carolina University's Brody School of Medicine — a detail that underscores just how far critical trauma patients from this stretch of eastern North Carolina must travel for the highest level of emergency care.
Tractor-trailer driver Paul Barnes, a 57-year-old Wilson resident, was taken to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries. Manzanaris-Torres was also taken to ECU Health Medical Center for treatment of his injuries, and the vehicle-related case against him remains under investigation, per the Telegram's reporting. The N.C. Highway Patrol was not involved in the chase itself.
Charges Suspect Could Face
North Carolina law provides that fleeing to elude arrest can be classified as an aggravated misdemeanor, a Class H felony, when the violation causes a death; two aggravating factors can also produce a Class H felony, while death plus two aggravating factors can produce a Class E felony, according to the Hiltzheimer Law Office. Separately, the robbery with a dangerous weapon charge Manzanaris-Torres already faced is a Class D felony that generally requires an active prison sentence, per the Law Offices of Anna Smith Felts. The financial card theft charge is a lesser Class I felony, according to the Garrett, Walker, Aycoth & Olson Law Firm.
North Carolina appellate precedent discusses second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter instructions, according to FindLaw. It is not yet known from available reporting what charges, if any, will be pursued in this case.
A Corridor With a History of Dangerous Chases
Dunbar Road, where Tarboro police first attempted to stop Manzanaris-Torres, has previously served as the corridor for high-speed police chases exceeding 100 mph that ended in crashes near Tarboro, according to public records cited by the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office. That history adds weight to the deadly outcome of Tuesday's pursuit along the same route.
The crash also fits into a troubling statewide pattern. A 2023 investigation by ABC11 found that roughly 25 percent of individuals killed or injured in vehicle pursuits across North Carolina were non-fleeing victims, such as passengers and uninvolved motorists. Castro was a passenger and Barnes was the truck driver in this case. Nationally, fatal police pursuits killed 525 people in 2021 and 545 in 2020, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data reported by the Police Executive Research Forum.
Discussion of police-pursuit fatalities appears in available materials. National standards for police-pursuit policies have not been established, and the Police Executive Research Forum has made recommendations on such policies. The available sources do not detail an Edgecombe County protocol for crash reconstruction or the division of investigative responsibility after a fatal municipal pursuit.
