A trio of teenagers in St. .Petersburg, Florida reportedly hit 198 km/h per hour in a stolen Maserati before going airborne and crashing through a store sign early Sunday.
The dramatic crash, which killed one passenger and left the other two injured, came after the teens — none with a driver’s licence — tried to evade Pinellas County sheriff’s deputies after the unlocked 2016 sports car was stolen, accoreding to the New York Post.
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A police helicopter tracked the suspect vehicle on video from above as two police SUVs tried to pull over the vehicle around 3:20 a.m., but then the 15-year-old driver hit the gas.
“He takes off, the deputies immediately turn off their overheads, the sergeant got on radio and told them to disengage which they did immediately,” Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told reporters, according to a live stream of the press conference.
Despite the deputies slowing down, the video shows that the Maserati sped up and within a few blocks it flipped, jumped a curb and went flying into a business sign.
Front seat passenger Mario Bonilla, 15, died at the scene while the driver and another 16-year-old passenger were both hospitalized.
The Sheriff said police later found a 25-caliber semiautomatic gun in the car which they believe had been sold and resold on the streets since 1968.
“None of them had any criminal histories but what appears clear is is that these kids were out doing a whole bunch of bad things — they just hadn’t been caught,” Gualtieri said.
The three had apparently snuck out of their parents’ respective houses and the sheriff said the driver could face a third-degree felony murder charge.
