DANVILLE — It was going on 6 o’clock Saturday evening at an ordinarily sleepy interstate exit. But cops were everywhere, at least two dozen of them, their cars and trucks lining the end of an I-16 off-ramp in Twiggs County.
They chose this interchange in a rural county of 8,000 people and no stoplights at Exit 27 in part for its remoteness. And for an element of surprise.
On the interstate ahead of the exit, they had placed flashing, portable message boards warning of a DUI checkpoint. Many motorists assumed it was ahead on I-16. Some tried to evade it by taking the exit ramp. Where the police were waiting.
The annual two-day operation, always on a Friday and Saturday in mid-March, is broadly aimed at catching lawbreaking travelers bound for St. Patrick’s Day revelry in Savannah, where this year’s parade attracted tens of thousands of celebrants.
The spot is so off the beaten path that sometimes 15 minutes pass without a single car cruising up the winding exit ramp. Most years, while dozens of people are jailed on DUI, drug and probation charges, there are few confrontational encounters. Police give away child car seats and Matchbox cars to children.
Those travelers making unplanned stops off Exit 27 who are cited, or in some cases, handcuffed, present a range of reactions. Years ago when a New Englander nabbed for trafficking drugs posted bail, she asked where the nearest subway station was, according to police.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Some mouth off. Like a guy given a ticket for not wearing his seat belt during this year’s dragnet. Others, like a trio of women from Atlanta in a Chevy Malibu bound for Savannah, seemed unfazed Friday night as cops plucked bottle after bottle of open liquor and multiple bags of marijuana and other drugs from the car. As the contraband piled up, one cop looked at the women and said, “They’re just chill.”
But policing can, in a flash, veer from low-key to dangerous.
As the dinner hour approached Saturday, a crisp, pre-spring sundown, there was a lull in the exiting traffic.
Then a black SUV rolled up and kept going.
It accelerated.
Officers yelled, “Stop!”
The SUV instead shot through the checkpoint at the end of the off-ramp, down an on-ramp and back to the interstate toward Savannah.
“In a matter of seconds, it changes,” Twiggs Sheriff Darren Mitchum said. “When it turns and goes the bad way, you’ve got to be prepared to turn and go with it.”
The fleeing SUV, a GMC Denali, didn’t get far.
It crashed a few miles down the interstate after a 100-plus-mph chase, during which dashcam video shows it swerving, nearly broadsiding other automobiles. When a pursuing police SUV rammed its back end, the Denali vaulted off the highway and tumbled to a stop, briefly catching fire in a ditch.
Officials said they soon learned its driver, Royjeri McClendon, 34, was a convicted felon. Police said he was wanted in other Georgia counties and in Missouri on charges that include armed robbery and hit-and-run.
Deputies said McClendon fought them as they pulled him from the burning SUV. They said he was combative with EMS workers and had to be driven to a Macon hospital in a patrol car.
Twiggs sheriff’s deputies also said he had a pistol, ammunition and “multiple pounds” of marijuana. He was being treated for injuries that included a broken arm.
McClendon, who is from DeKalb County, faces charges that include fleeing and eluding, aggravated assault with a motor vehicle, felony drug distribution and multiple firearms possession allegations. He was still being treated at a Macon hospital on Wednesday. It was unclear if he has a lawyer.
All told at the two-day checkpoint, 38 people were jailed. Two, including McClendon, were said to be fugitives. Eight were charged with DUI. Seventeen were arrested on felony drug charges that included alleged possession or distribution of marijuana, fentanyl, cocaine and ecstasy. There were 20 citations issued for seat belt or car seat violations.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Known as “Operation Wrong Exit,” the ploy was conceived two decades ago when Mitchum became sheriff.
And Exit 27, about 25 miles southeast of downtown Macon, is geographically perfect.
There is no reason to exit. The interchange is barren — nothing but trees and breeze. There are no gas marts, no stores, no restrooms.
Late Friday, as the dozens of officers assembled to screen motorists were about to call it a night, there was movement in a plot of crepe myrtles and grassland that separate the interstate from the off-ramp.
It was a man. On foot.
The guy said he had been arguing with his girlfriend, that she put him out of her car somewhere back up the highway.
The cops suspected the man had likely sent his girlfriend toward what he assumed was the checkpoint on I-16, hoping to skirt the police cars waiting along the interstate with their blue lights blazing, with plans to meet up with her somewhere down the road.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
But those cars out on the freeway were decoys. The real snare was around a bend on the sharply curved exit ramp, right where the man wandered. He gave a fake name and date of birth, according to cops at the scene. He was, it turned out, wanted on theft and probation charges in neighboring counties.
It probably didn’t help that he was, as Twiggs County sheriff’s Maj. Josh Nobles put it, “heavily intoxicated.”
The annual ploy is something of an experiment in human psychology. Often enough, even when people who are fooled into exiting are made aware of the ruse, they fail to grasp they have just driven themselves into trouble. And that if they had kept going on the interstate, they would not have been caught.
“The fear of getting caught is overwhelming. They’re not thinking,” Twiggs sheriff’s Capt. Lee Smith said. “They have to make a split-second decision.”
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