Monday, March 9, 2015
Fall From Cliff Injures Man Fleeing From Deputies
A Summertown man was airlifted to a Nashville hospital Sunday after falling off a cliff while fleeing from law enforcement officers in an attempt to avoid arrest.
A deputy with the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department reports that he was on patrol in the vicinity of Pleasant Garden and North Brace Roads when he noticed a vehicle parked inside a cemetery. He said that there was an outstanding violation of probation warrant against the individual who had been driving the vehicle, twenty-seven year old Johnathan Edward Gray of 41 Patrick Road.
After he passed, the deputy noted that the driver began to leave at a high rate of speed. The deputy turned around, caught up to the car, and conducted a traffic stop at the Patrick/North Brace Road intersection. The individual driving the car, identified as Gray’s girlfriend, told the deputy that she and Gray had fought, and that she had not seen him since the previous night.
As the deputy headed back toward South Brace Road he was notified of a call received through Lawrence Central Dispatch. An individual had called to report that when he saw the deputy turning around, he saw a man jump out of the silver vehicle when the driver stopped at the top of a hill on Pleasant Garden Road. He said the man, wearing a white T-shirt, had fled into the woods.
Additional deputies and officers with the Ethridge Police Department responded to the scene and began to conduct a search of the area. The reporting deputy said that while walking along a creek bank he passed a twenty-foot cliff and noticed that Gray was “wedged between two huge rocks.”
The deputy reports that when he called to Gray, he told him that he had fallen from the top of the cliff and broken his leg, and that he was unable to move. The deputy climbed up to Gray, staying with him while emergency medical personnel and firefighters responded to the scene. Firefighters conducted a rescue operation and were able to retrieve Gray from the cliff. He was airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for medical attention.
