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Name Not Disclosed

Age : 31

Gender : Male

Race : Unknown

Date : 08/12/2021

Location : Wilson Road and Atascocita Road

City : Houston

County : Harris

State : Texas

Agency : Humble Police Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Vehicle

Event : Killed by police vehicle crash during pursuit

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 08/12/2021, a 31-year-old man was killed when a vehicle carrying at least two men crashed and overturned after a Humble Police Department officer pursued it for approximately two miles at what police acknowledged was a very high rate of speed. Contemporary reporting did not establish whether the man killed was the driver or passenger, and later publicly indexed reporting located for this update still does not reliably resolve his identity or his position in the vehicle.
At approximately 2:50 to 3:00 a.m., Humble police responded to the 600-800 block of Wilson Road after someone reported people attempting to break into a business. The targeted business was Couzan's Cajun Restaurant. Someone had broken a window and damaged a wall, apparently attempting to gain access through the restaurant to an adjoining convenience store and its ATM.
A Humble police officer arrived and saw a vehicle occupied by men matching the description associated with the reported break-in. Humble Police Sgt. Jack Burt said the officer drove toward the vehicle, and the driver maneuvered around the patrol car and jumped a curb. The officer then turned around and began pursuing the vehicle southbound on Wilson Road.
Police pursued the vehicle for approximately two miles. Burt acknowledged that the pursuit reached a "very high rate of speed," but the publicly available reporting does not provide the actual maximum speed, the pursuing officer's speed, or the speed of the other vehicle. No later pursuit reconstruction located for this update supplies those figures.
In the 3100 block of Wilson Road near Atascocita Road, the driver lost control. The vehicle left the roadway, struck a tree or entered the wooded median area and rolled over, coming to rest upside down. One of the men was ejected from the vehicle and died at the scene. Police believed he had not been wearing a seat belt.
The other 31-year-old man had to be extricated from the wreckage and was transported to a Kingwood-area hospital. The Houston Chronicle reported that he remained in intensive care later that morning. Initial reports conflicted over whether two or three people had been inside the vehicle, but the more detailed police account described two 31-year-old men.
Importantly for classification of the death, police initially could not determine whether the man who was ejected and killed had been driving or riding as a passenger. ABC13 explicitly reported that investigators did not know which occupant had been driving. The later publicly accessible sources located for this update do not provide reliable evidence resolving that issue. He therefore should not be classified as the driver merely because he was killed during the pursuit.
The available record also does not establish that police had attempted a conventional traffic stop before beginning the pursuit. The officer was responding to a reported burglary, encountered the vehicle at the scene, and began pursuing after the driver maneuvered around his patrol vehicle and drove away.
The pursuit was short in distance but apparently extremely fast. Despite police acknowledging the "very high rate of speed," no later publicly accessible pursuit-policy review, crash reconstruction, body-camera or dashboard-camera release, disciplinary determination, lawsuit, settlement or prosecutor review was located that materially expands the original account or examines the decision to continue the pursuit.
The owner of Couzan's Cajun Restaurant, Stella Calais, expressed distress over the death rather than focusing on the damage to her business. She said many young people from the neighborhood came into her restaurant and she did not know whether she might know the men involved. Speaking after learning someone had died, she said the property damage was no longer her primary concern and described the outcome as not worth the loss of life.
The deceased man's identity remains the largest unresolved issue. Contemporary reports withheld both men's names, and searches for later reporting, fatal-crash follow-ups and litigation did not produce a sufficiently reliable identification. The database entry should therefore remain Name Withheld unless an official crash report, death certificate or other authoritative record establishes his identity.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND:
The Humble Police Department officer who initiated and conducted the high-speed pursuit has not been publicly identified.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://abc13.com/humble-police-chase-deadly-crash-rollover-ejected-from-car/10946700/
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/Man-31-dies-in-crash-during-high-speed-Humble-16382363.php
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2021/08/12/man-killed-after-police-chase-ends-in-crash-in-humble-police-say/