A police chase near Miami University ended in a violent rollover crash late Saturday night, leaving a vehicle flipped onto its roof with at least one person trapped inside. The wreck happened around 11 p.m. at the intersection of Milford-Oxford Road and Bonham Road in Oxford, Ohio, after Miami University police pursued a vehicle that ultimately crashed and overturned.
According to FOX19, the vehicle wrecked at that intersection while Miami University police were chasing it, landing upside down and pinning at least one occupant inside. Oxford police and the Butler County Sheriff's Office both responded to the scene to assist.
Miami University Police Department is the university’s campus law-enforcement agency, headquartered at 4945 Oxford-Trenton Road. The department maintains four substations on the Oxford campus to make officers more accessible to students, and university safety materials say officers patrol campus around the clock. Miami University Police Department information describes its campus role and locations.
Fire Crews Work to Free Trapped Occupant
Fire crews arrived and worked to free the person trapped inside the overturned vehicle, per dispatch information relayed in the report. It was not immediately clear how long the effort would take or what condition the person was in.
The extent of any injuries from the crash was not immediately clear, nor was the reason Miami University police had been chasing the vehicle in the first place. Both details remain unknown as of the initial report from the same outlet.
Ohio law requires each law-enforcement entity to adopt a written policy for vehicle pursuits and train officers on that policy. State law directs agencies to consider Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board standards. Those standards call for policies to address when pursuits may begin, how factors such as the alleged offense and road conditions are weighed, who can order a pursuit to end, and how each pursuit is documented and reviewed. The requirements provide a framework for evaluating the incident, but do not establish why officers began this pursuit.
What Remains Unknown
No information has been released about who was inside the vehicle beyond the fact that at least one person was trapped, and no arrests, citations or charges connected to the chase or crash have been reported. The investigation into what preceded the pursuit, and what led police to chase the vehicle through Oxford in the first place, remains open.
