Car chase comes to a watery end

Stolen Toyota rolls into Patuxent

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

A Golden Beach couple enjoying a Saturday evening in their waterfront home received some unexpected visitors — a stolen car that went across their yard and into the Patuxent River, and the police who were on its tail.

Two St. Mary's men were jailed on theft and property destruction charges after their arrest by the law officers who pursued them. "It was scary," Frankie Gebhardt said this week. "It's not every day that some car drives through your yard and ends up in the river."

St. Mary's sheriff's deputy J.W. Vezzosi was traveling on Route 5 that night when he spotted the gold Toyota Camry, and a records check on its tag revealed it had been reported stolen in Charles County, according to court papers. The car refused to stop, and the deputy had his emergency lights and siren going during the five-mile pursuit along the length of Golden Beach Road, to the Gebhardts' home on Beach Drive. "The car drove right past the window," Frankie Gebhardt said. "We heard all the squad cars coming."

The couple locked their doors, she said, and her husband, Edmund Gebhardt, went outside to see what was happening. The car had left its tire marks in the yard, as it traveled toward and over rocks piled at the shoreline.

"The rock starts at the top in the yard and slopes out into the water," Frankie Gebhardt said. "It's probably two-and-a- half feet deep right there where [the car] went in."

The sheriff's deputy spotted 27-year-old Clifton Cornelius Pickeral of Mechanicsville, a rear seat passenger, trying to flee from the moving vehicle, charging papers state, and John R. Garner, 28, of Leonardtown also was arrested and identified as the operator of the stolen vehicle. In addition to the theft and property destruction charges, Garner was charged with reckless driving and attempting to elude police.

A judge ordered Monday that Garner remain jailed in lieu of $5,000 bond and that Pickeral remain jailed in lieu of 10 percent of $4,500 bond, on the charges of stealing the car owned by Mary L. Johnson of Waldorf and damaging the Gebhardts' yard and shoreline barrier.

Frankie Gebhardt said that police, firefighters and a tow truck crew that pulled the car out of the river handled the matter in a prompt and professional manner.

"It was pretty exciting," she said.

jwharton@somdnews.com