Four Wounded After Israel Police Highway Chase Ends in Crash; Suspect Turns Himself In

Four people were injured, one seriously, on Saturday morning when a police car collided into a passenger car during a chase on Highway 4.

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The police said that the pursuit was sparked at around 10 A.M., after a vehicle failed to comply with orders to stop, breaking through a police roadblock that was erected outside the city of Givat Shmuel during an operation targeting car theft.

During the chase, police said, the suspected car continued to Highway 4, driving in the opposite lane, with the police behind it. It was then that the police car hit a passenger vehicle near the Morasha interchange, allowing the suspected vehicle to get away.

Hours after the incident, the driver, a 52-year-old Palestinian resident of Bethlehem, turned himself in and was taken for interrogation.

The two officers in the police car and a man and a woman who were driving the passenger car were wounded in the incident. A paramedic with the Magen David Adom emergency response service said that the woman, in her 40s, suffered a head wound and was taken to hospital in serious condition. The man, in his 50s, was in moderate condition after suffering injures to his limbs, the paramedic said. One of the policemen suffered a head and chest trauma and was in moderate condition, while the other was lightly hurt.

The suspected car's license plate number identified the owners of the vehicle as a resident of East Jerusalem. Police said that an initial investigation found that the car was stolen, but that the owner of the car will be brought in for questioning.