Yesterday while at the gym I was looking up at the TV and noticed the news was running a re-cap of a spectacular car chase. This is pretty ho-hum for LA television. There is one on every day. Police in Houston were in hot pursuit until the driver went up a ramp the wrong way, and smashed headfirst into another car. Immediately afterward, a woman jumped out of the car and moved in between the two cars. I assumed that maybe she was attacking the offending driver. Because the television was muted I didn’t get the whole story. SM tipster “Kanti” tips us off to the real story. Apparently the woman was primarily rushing to the backseat of her own car to make sure that her baby was okay. What about this crazy driver? Watch the video. Click2Houston.com reports:
The man who led police on a dangerous chase through three counties appeared in court early Thursday morning.
Jatinderjit Mann, 31, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — the weapon being the gray BMW he was driving — and evading arrest…Mann is being held in the Harris County [Houston] Jail on a $55,000 bond…
The 90-minute chase reached speeds of 100 mph. From the restaurant, Mann led officers east on Beltway 8 past Highway 59 before turning around and heading north on Interstate 45 near Conroe, where he turned around and headed back to the beltway…
Some officers were upset that they were not allowed to do more. Under the department’s policy, they were not allowed to hit the suspect’s car, which some officers believe would have ended the chase a lot sooner. [Link]
This whole thing started because Mann was apparently making racial slurs and using abusive language at the restaurant he was at. Some women complained, and when police were called he took off in disgust. Apparently Mann is a Brit:
The suspect said very little in court. He kept asking if he could speak to the British Embassy. The judge told him he could speak to the British Consulate. Mann is a British citizen. [Link]
The other interesting thing was that the lady driving the car that got hit was listening to the chase unfold on the radio:
After the collision, McShan jumped out of her car and slammed her fist on the BMW in disgust. Then she frantically tried to get her baby out of the backseat of the Dodge.She had known all about the chase before she was hit.
“We had been listening to (news accounts of) it (on the radio) the whole time, but we didn’t know where he was,” she said. “I just happened to look up and saw the helicopters and said, ‘He’s got to be close.’ That’s when that happened.” [Link]
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Crazy Brits 
Although this is slightly not related, the car that was being driven is a 2006 BMW 3 series. I was browsing through the BMW forums and I saw this. Its funny to see how the owners react to seeing a car similar to theirs being chased.
Ooh and the E90 refers to the Chasis number corresponding to the new 3 series.
Easier to watch video clip here.
Matchbox cars?
Naming mixup:
How weird… but what a gorgeous car! Before he smashed it all up, that is. I don’t know anything more than what the news report says but my first thought when hearing about his bizarre and inappropriate behavior was… “frontal lobe tumor!.” But I tend to think lots of people have FLTs.
it really is:
“Thise run flats should do good over the spike strips.” “They better not ram that car!” “Handles well in the breakdown lane too!” “He’ll get good mileage, this could go on all night!” “go bmw go!!!” “He must have NAV with all the great routes he’s picking!” “The announcer here said he looked really relaxed….we all know that feeling!”
all about perspective eh
Are you guys planning to highlight everything “desi”? Relevance and Substance be damned.
I like and enjoy this blog. And fully understand that it is your right to blog on anything you please. So, all I can do [short of starting my own blog – for which I lack the talent and initiative] is plead – please do not turn into a tabloid.
Naah – ignore that – keep it simultaneously tabloid and intellectual – let Sepia Mutiny be all things to all men (and women)
Hells yeah, we like it this way.
Jay: The braces look like an after thought, that’s incase you did not notice.
“Expose”: Shame on you for missing the larger signifigance and societal implications of this story. It is unheard of for a desi man in America to be involved in a high speed car chase with the police. Brown people know that at the arraignment there would be terrorism charges added to the list of crimes (unless there was a “note to the plaintiff that his daughter was tied up in a Brooklyn basement”). One could argue that the BMW was being used as a weapon of mass destruction in this case, as it sped around Houston. In light of that it makes sense that the offender behind the wheel was found to be a Brit.
There shall be no tabloid posts here. 🙂
thinking about it I quote Ananthan
31 year desi dude was not driving a Camary. Thats news.
Yeah – if he had done this in a Datsun it wouldnt have been news.
I am glad to see my fellow British-Indian being such a smash hit in America.
Hopefully this will counterbalance the good things that Parminder Nagra has done for the image of British-Punjabis in American society and show that we produce idiots too, just to remind you that we are not all super-cool and sexy.
so why did he feel the need to go 100 mph down the freeways? he could have taken off in disgust and stayed within the speed limit. i dont get it…
Dude. The bimmer is becoming as much of a desi car (a bit upmarket and ‘kool ishporty gaadi’) as the good ol’ camry. So it’s not news he’s driving a BMW. In fact, when my officemate saw this, she said, ‘probably a IT geek’.
Brit-Indian getting caught on high speed liveTV chase in Amrikaa that too in BMW 330..360 whatever it is. That IS news..BIG news.
TB, LOL you said it. I don’t understand the psyche of all these idiots who set off on such adventures. I mean do they really think that they can get away? Isn’t it obvious that either they’ll crash and get seriously hurt/die or be cornered by the cops? What are they thinking exactly?
Well since he was Brit I just assumed that he was probably quite drunk before embarking on his adventure. Maybe I assumed wrong but we will see if that was the case 🙂
Glad to note that Desis are driving bimmers. However, he must not be an IT geek, it takes a segmentation fault for an IT geek to let out a slur. Moreover the geek would be obediently on the shoulder of the road before the Cop puts his hand away from the switch after lighting him up. tees saal ka experience hai
Thank God nothing happened to the baby & other passengers…
I’m really impressed by the way that thing handles
Does this guy’s arrogance and general lack of respect for human life not matter to anyone? This guy’s a prick in a fast car, I could give a damn if he’s desi/sikh/brit or even a turd from mars, he needs to be off the roads and spend time in jail for his misdeeds.
I’m delighted he’s paved the way for other brown folk to be known as more than overachieving potential terrorists with tech skills.
Let’s hear it for Jatinderjit Mann — underachiever of the year!!
I think people were being sarcastic timepass, you know? Everyone says he is an idiot, reckless, crazy.
That would have been true in 1996.
Far too many desis driving bimmers these days, it’s almost a stereotype.
oh my.. he is indian? I saw this on t.v. today and i wanted to pull him out the t.v. set and choke him! There was a LI’L baby in the other car.. IDIOTS! ugghhh
You wanted to choke the chicken?
Dude, you haven’t seen enough desi geeks when inebriated (usually a beer or two does it for desis, unless you are Punjabi, of course!). They’d make a gangsta blush.
DesiNole: Thanks for the link to that forum. Those reactions were hilarious and I got to download a couple of Top Gear videos as well. Its quite another matter that I had to masquerade as a E90 (threw in the M3 marquee for effect) owner to get in and download those videos. On hindsight, I think this guy had been watching BMWfilms once too often. FYI, BMWFilms.com is a site that featured short movies featuring Clive Owen as a chaffuer-on-hire and guest stars like James Brown and Madonna, driving a vehicle from the BMW stable. There were, I think 6 short movies, each made by directors like Guy Ritchie, John Woo, Ridley Scott and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Sadly the movies are not available online anymore (were taken down in October last year) and are are now featured in the Museum of Modern Art, after winning several awards at Cannes etc! We used to watch these shorts on the overhead at grad school, whenever a instructor was not around. lol.. Every single one of them had the stamp of their director. The short featuring Madonna was the funniest, typical Guy Ritchie fare! They were the best ads that a company could make (though Honda seems to be doing a lot for its Euro ads) for its products. And so was this chase! And that’s the first thought that came up when I saw the footage! Ofcourse its sad and stupid. More so because the police were told to back down from the chase and let the guy go.
Anti: You are welcome. And yes I do remember the bmwfilms.com website. In fact you could pay and get those movies in a DVD.
I think everyone is pissed at him for the following
a) He was an ass b) He almost got away, but decided to do something stupid that ended the chase (if you are a BMW owner) c) He hit a car that had a baby
Everyone is happy that
a) It ended b) The woman from the other car almost beat the sht outta him. (Hey can we say sht here ???) c) The baby and everyone involved are safe.
how true. how true. recently saw a very very senior manager from my company doing a hand stand at a company party after a few beers
Just another jumped up man with a self-entitlement off the charts hurting others. No IT geek, people. Just a brown man with a rage problem who sees red and turns off his judgement in pursuit of self-indulgence. Especially these Punjabi men, let me tell you. His wife probably made some reference to some obscene behavior in front of the family and he just blew his top, took his expensive car (which he bought with the money they made through a small business) and decided to evade the police because at the time “he was angry”. We’ve seen what a geek could do with a gun and many many rounds of ammo and now we see what a self-entitled doofus can do with a really expensive car. We are too cool, no?
Especially these Punjabi men, let me tell you.
Quick to stereotype, eh?
I wonder what kind of racial slurs he was making?
Another Beemer driver involved in another incident… reckless homicide using an expensive vehicle as the weapon of choice. No “desi” agel to this one, though. 🙂
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Man run down after yelling at speeding driver in OC parking lot
Associated Press
ALISO VIEJO, Calif. – A former high school football coach was run down and critically injured after he yelled at a driver speeding in a mall parking lot, authorities said Friday.
John Royston, 41, of Aliso Viejo was hospitalized in extremely critical condition with “massive” head injuries and severe leg injuries, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Amormino originally said the father of three had played professional football for the Atlanta Falcons, based on information provided by the hospital and the man’s friends. However, his wife, the Falcons and the National Football League have no record of him as a player, Amormino said.
A search by The Associated Press failed to find Royston on any Falcons roster between 1983 and 2005. Royston is a former football coach for nearby Santa Margarita Catholic High School, school officials said, the alma mater of several pro football players, including Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer.
Royston, now a loan officer, and two friends walked out of a restaurant in a busy outdoor mall around 11:30 p.m. Thursday when they saw a silver or light blue BMW sedan with two or three young men inside speed by and blow through a stop sign, Amormino said. The victim yelled at the driver to slow down, he said.
The driver sped erratically through the parking lot, collided with a parked Mercedes Benz, then turned around and sped toward Royston and his friends, Amormino said. Royston again yelled at the driver to slow down, but the motorist ran him down as he walked toward his friend’s Ford F-150 pickup truck, he said.
“It was an intentional act,” Amormino said.
The driver of the BMW fled the scene, he said. Authorities believe the front end of the car was damaged. Amormino said a search was under way for the car and the driver.