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Witness: Suspects doing drugs when police found them hiding in yard after chase

By Ross Cavitt
By Ross Cavitt

COBB COUNTY — A man already wanted for running from police earlier this year was taken into custody after a similar incident Friday night in Cobb County.

According to police, Maurice Carson sped off when officers tried to pull him over.

A short time later, Carson allegedly crashed and one of his passengers was ejected from the vehicle. That person died.

Carson and another passenger ran from that scene and allegedly hid in Berenice Salazar’s backyard. She said they were doing drugs when police eventually found them.

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"It sounded like he crashed three times,” Salazar said.

Salazar told Channel 2's Ross Cavitt she and her husband were getting ready to put their two kids to bed when they heard the violent crash just yards away.

"The sound was so bad,” Salazar said.

The impact sent the rear-seat passenger in the Toyota Corolla out into the roadway, where the 31-year-old man died.

Salazar said her panicked family looked out the window to find that the driver, later identified as Carson, was stumbling toward their house.

"Really confused, so he's trying to jump the little fence we have,” Salazar said. "So he's trying to jump here to get into the house but he couldn't do it because he was so fat."

Police said it had started about a mile away, when an officer tried to pull over Carson's car. But the man -- wanted in another police chase incident in March -- sped off.

"Officers discontinued the chase, turned off all their emergency equipment. The vehicle continued down Cochrane Road toward South Cobb Drive,” Alicia Chilton with the Cobb County Police Department said.

The car barreled through the South Cobb intersection, where a taxi broad-sided it.

Salazar said Carson and his surviving passenger, Trevonn Blacknall, hid behind a shed in her backyard for more than a half hour before the family ran out and alerted police, who sent in the dogs.

She's thankful they never made it to her front door.

"We were so scared because we don't know what happened. After that sound, my kids and me were shaking,” Salazar said.

Cox Media Group

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