DAYTON — A woman said she was shocked to see her car on the news Wednesday after it crashed off U.S. 35 in Beavercreek following a high-speed, wrong-way police chase that ended in a dramatic crash.
RELATED: Car crashes off U.S. 35 in Beavercreek after wrong-way pursuit
Latonya Chapman told News Center 7’s Mike Campbell that her car was stolen from the parking lot of a Trotwood body shop.
“I thought they were going to find it on a street or something, but not getting chased,” she said. “That was, like, shocking.”
The car is totaled, and the driver, identified by police as 44-year-old Jason Lyle Kosher, is behind bars in the Montgomery County Jail. Police said he fled on U.S. 35 from Dayton police, across Riverside before losing control and went off the highway down an embankment onto Grange Hall Road in Beavercreek.
A passenger in the car was injured, but police said the man, who was not identified, will not be charged.
Chapman said her cellphone lit up when the chase hit the air on News Center 7.
“Oh yeah, everybody, someone came to the job and brought me the Facebook picture and was like, ‘I think this is your car.’”
She said she had taken her car to a body shop for repairs, and that Trotwood police told her it was stolen.
“That was the shocking part of all of that, that it got stolen from a shop,” she said.
>>RELATED: ‘Literally it fell out of the air,’ witness described shocking conclusion to U.S. 35 chase
It was one piece of bad news after another to see it involved in a chase, then realize the crash damage totaled her car.
“I knew it was over. The car was gone,” she said.
Dayton police on Friday said that when they chased the car, they believed it was 33-year-old James Harper behind the wheel. Harper was arrested the next day after pursuit by the Ohio State Highway Patrol through three counties on Interstate 75. Harper is in the Miami County Jail on a cash-only $10,000 bond, booked on suspicion of OVI, failure to comply with police, improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle, having a weapon while under disability and falsification, jail records show.
Chapman said she’s glad police caught the men, especially before Kosher hurt anyone driving the wrong way.
“I was hoping, like, I hope nobody gets hurt, that was just devastating to see that,” she said.
>> U.S. 35 wrong-way pursuit: Scanner traffic from police
Now, Chapman said she is depending on friends for transportation to work and support after a week’s worth of roller-coaster emotions.
“Well angry,” she said of her state of mind, “but I’ll get through it, I’ll get through it.”
Kosher was arraigned Friday afternoon for receiving stolen property and failure to comply with an order or signal of a police officer. He will be on electronic home detention if he posts his $25,000 bond.
