A Police Chase, a Fatal Crash, and the Question Nobody Can Answer

On December 3, 2021, a Solon, Ohio patrol officer ran a random registration check on a Blue Ford Fusion that caught his attention. The car had been stolen at gunpoint the day before during an aggravated robbery in Cleveland. What followed was a police chase that ended with an 85-year-old woman dead, her husband injured, and two teenagers facing decades in prison. But the episode's host spends as much time wrestling with a harder question as he does recounting the chase itself: when police make split-second decisions that lead to civilian deaths, who is really at fault?

The Chase and the Crash

The suspects inside the stolen vehicle were 19-year-old J. Marlon Hayes, driving, and 20-year-old Rontell Clarks, in the passenger seat. Both had criminal histories—Hayes had been caught distributing drugs at 18, and both were involved in another car theft just four days earlier, when they threatened a vehicle owner with a firearm, demanded her wallet, and drove away in her car.