QUESTION: What caused a Burlington police officer to crash into another vehicle while he was on duty two Saturdays ago?
ANSWER: Officer Caleb Harmon was on his way to the scene of an emergency when he collided with another motorist at the intersection of Maple Avenue and South Mebane Street at about 4:15 p.m. on August 16.
Josh Light, an assistant chief with the city’s police department, recalls that Harmon was running his lights and sirens as he rushed to answer a report of a non-fatal shooting along the 1300 block of Hillsdale Drive.
Harmon never reached the scene of the shooting due to the aforementioned traffic accident, which prompted the city’s police department to issue a separate news release on August 17.
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According to the department’s news release, the force of the collision sent the officer’s vehicle careening into a building along the 400 block of Maple Avenue. The officer sustained non-life-threatening injuries during the wreck – as did both occupants of the other vehicle – and all three were subsequently hospitalized for treatment.
The Alamance News has gone on to obtain a copy of the accident report, which offers some additional details about the collision.
According to the report, the second driver, who is identified as Vidal Jesus Reyes-Diaz, was heading north along Maple Avenue toward a solid green light. Harmon, meanwhile, was approaching the intersection from the east along Mebane Street – with a red light barring his way. The report adds that both a witness and Harmon himself confirmed that the officer had been running his lights and siren at the time of the accident.
According to the accident report, Harmon applied his brakes and tried to swerve to the right when he noticed Reyes-Diaz approaching the intersection. Meanwhile, Reyes-Diaz slammed his brakes and turned the wheel a bit to the left. These evasive maneuvers weren’t enough to avoid the collision, which sent the civilian vehicle hurtling 180 degrees into a pole-mounted “Flock” camera and license plate reader that had been set up at the intersection. At the same time, Harmon’s vehicle did a quarter turn and struck a street sign before it came to rest against a building at 427 Maple Avenue.
While the department’s accident report doesn’t formally ascribe “fault” to either party in the collision, it does mention a couple of contributing factors that appear to have influenced the outcome.
One problem was the visual obstructions that both drivers encountered as they closed in on the intersection. The report also notes that both vehicles were initially exceeding the 35-mile-an-hour speed limit – with Reyes-Diaz calculated to be going about 45 miles an hour and Harmon gauged at 73, based on his vehicle’s internal telemetry records.
According to assistant chief Light, Harmon tendered his resignation from the department, effective August 21.
