51°
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
7 Day Forecast
Follow our weather team on social media

WATCH: Suspect appears to Snapchat overnight police chase

7 years 5 months 8 hours ago Thursday, October 27 2016 Oct 27, 2016 October 27, 2016 6:16 PM October 27, 2016 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - A man claiming to be the suspect in a high-speed chase and officer-involved shooting told followers on a social media app he loved his friends and was going away "for a very long time" as he documented his run from the law Wednesday night.

Authorities have not confirmed the individual in the video is the suspect in the chase and the man's user name was not clearly visible on the video, which was a recording of the original. The video appears to have first been published as a video story on Snapchat, a video messaging application for smartphones.  

The video shows a man driving a similar-looking vehicle used to run from police Wednesday night. A hole, appearing to be a bullet entry into the vehicle's window, was seen in the video. Officers at Southern University fired at a maroon Jeep after the driver tried to run them over on campus Wednesday shortly before 10 p.m. The vehicle in the video appears to be a dark colored Jeep.

"I'll be gone for a very long time, I love y'all," the man tells the camera in the video. "I'm on... a police chase," he continued as he opened the window and showed flashing blue lights behind him.

"(I'm on) a real speed chase," he said as the video ends.

The video appears to be a montage of a series of clips - or snaps - that are loaded to a Snapchat user's profile to tell a video story of an event.

Authorities have not released the name of the suspect in the video, but did say the suspect involved is Devonte Stewart.

The person who recorded the original video from Stewart's SnapChat page and shared it with WBRZ claims he had seen him around Southern's campus. Authorities said the person involved in the altercation with police and involved in the chase was banned from Totty Hall dorms and was spotted there Wednesday night, which lead to officers initially confronting the individual.

"I was speechless," Miguel Dennis said. "I was tripping."

State Police, the agency leading the investigation into the events of Wednesday evening, said it was not aware of the Snapchat video.   Stewart was shot during the altercation with police when authorities said he tried to ram his vehicle into theirs.  Friends and classmates identified the individual in the Snapchat video as Stewart. 

WBRZ.com and WBRZ News 2 at 10:00 were first to break the story about the situation Wednesday. Click HERE for the original report. 

********************

Follow the publisher of this post on Twitter: @treyschmaltz

Related Stories

More News

Desktop News

Click to open Continuous News in a sidebar that updates in real-time.
Radar
7 Days