Video shows state trooper flipping pregnant woman’s car during chase
An Arkansas state trooper sent a pregnant woman’s SUV flipping during a high-speed highway chase — with newly released dashcam footage showing the aftermath of the wreck.
Nicole Harper, 38, who survived the harrowing incident, is now suing the department.
Harper, who was two months pregnant at the time, said she feared she lost her baby last year when Trooper Rodney Dunn deployed a “PIT maneuver” — short for pursuit intervention technique, NBC News reported.
The then-expectant mom, who was clocked doing 84 mph in a 70-mph zone, claims she was simply trying to find a safe spot to pull over.
“It’s essentially a bowling alley with bumpers on both sides,” said her lawyer, Andrew Norwood. “There’s nowhere to go. You’re boxed in by concrete barriers on both sides.”
For more than two minutes on July 9, Dunn attempted to pull Harper over on US-167 in Jacksonville when he nudged the back of her SUV with his cruiser — sending Harper suddenly veering left and out of the dashcam’s view.
Harper’s SUV struck the median and is picked back up on the footage after it came to a rest on its roof.
“Why didn’t you stop?” the trooper is heard asking her.
“Because I didn’t feel like it was safe,” Harper answered.
“Well this is where you ended up,” Dunn said. “Ma’am, you got to pull over.”
But Norwood called the trooper’s move “reckless” and said it “created substantial risk of physical injury.”
A doctor in the emergency room that night told Harper that he could not detect a fetal heartbeat — although her own doctor did the next day.
The baby girl was born in February.
Harper was charged with speeding and failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. Her lawsuit was filed last month in Pulaski County Circuit Court.
A spokesperson for Arkansas state police declined to comment to NBC.
