Fresno Police use helicopter to track SUV traveling as fast as 130 mph. How it was stopped

An SUV speeding as fast as 130 mph on Highway 41 while trying to flee Wednesday night from Fresno Police ended up crashing into a big rig.

The crash happened around 6:40 p.m. at the intersection of Cedar and Conejo avenues in southern Fresno County. Police said three people in the SUV suffered non-life-threatening injuries; a fourth person was believed to have ran away in a nearby orchard.

Police said the incident started when an officer noticed a gray SUV speeding along Jensen Avenue and that the vehicle possibly matched a description of a silver SUV connected with a shooting in the city from earlier in the day.

When police went to pull over the SUV, the driver speed off so fast that officers decided not to chase after the vehicle on the ground.

Instead, Fresno Police used a helicopter to keep track of the fleeing SUV.

The SUV managed to go from Jensen Avenue to southbound Highway 41, where the driver throttled the sports utility to roughly 130 mph at one point.

The SUV then made its way onto southbound Cedar Avenue, eventually smashing into the big rig that was traveling east on Conejo. The big rig overturned but the driver was unhurt, police said.

Police were working Wednesday night to determine if the SUV was the vehicle used in the shooting earlier Wednesday, when multiple shots were fired but nothing was struck.

This story was originally published September 14, 2022 at 9:55 PM.