Ann Arbor Police Department
- Police in Michigan said a boy driving a forklift led officers on a slow chase for more than an hour.
- Cops found the boy driving on Saturday evening, and gave chase at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour.
- Dashcam footage showed the boy knocking into parked cars and jumping red lights. No one was injured.
A 12-year-old boy in Ann Arbor, Michigan, led police on an hour-long, slow chase while driving a construction forklift stolen from a middle school.
The boy, who was not named, was found driving the forklift along a suburb on Saturday evening after someone reported the vehicle was stolen from Forsythe Middle School, the Ann Arbor Police Department said.
Officers sighted the boy at around 6.48 p.m., then pursued the forklift "at speeds of 15 to 20 mph with emergency lights and sirens on," per city police.
Police released a video of squad cars tailing the boy as he mounted curbs, beat several red lights, and toppled a road sign.
While in pursuit, the officers can be heard discussing the dilemma at hand — they had to somehow stop the boy without letting the forklift's hooks ram their vehicles.
"He's lowering the hooks, don't go in front of it," one officer warned his colleagues.
According to police, the boy struck around 10 parked vehicles as he made his low-speed getaway attempt.
Ann Arbor police stopped chasing the boy as he drove across the M-14 highway, after which deputies from the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office continued the pursuit.
He left Ann Arbor and eventually stopped at the "area of M-14 and Gotfredson," police said.
It was 7:53 p.m. by then, and the Gotfredson area is on the outskirts of neighboring Detroit and around 10 miles from Forsythe Middle School.
No one was injured during the slow-speed chase, and the boy was later sent to a juvenile detention center, police said.
The stolen vehicle — a Construction Genie GTH-636 Telehandler fitted with a forklift — had been unlocked using a key hidden in the cab, police added.
"This was a very dangerous situation that could've easily ended with serious injuries," police wrote. "The incident remains an active and ongoing criminal investigation."
"Someone is NOT seeing Santa this year!" a YouTube user wrote in the video's comments.