On Thursday, a Florida woman stole a sheriff’s deputy’s patrol car and led authorities on a high-speed chase, colliding head-on with an oncoming vehicle, killing herself and two others.
“This idiot stole a police car and killed two people,” Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods told reporters at a news conference Friday.
Investigators responded to a “suspicious incident” involving a woman, later identified as Kendra Boone, 33, who attempted to snatch an elderly woman’s keys at a Silver Springs shopping center, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. It is said that he was doing so.
The sheriff’s office said Lt. Chris Witte responded to the scene around 2 p.m. in a patrol SUV and told Boone, who approached the vehicle, to get out of the vehicle and quickly move to the rear.
But Boone instead jumped through the open passenger side window into the deputy’s car, which was still running with the keys in the ignition, and within seconds was behind the wheel, according to body camera video. I slipped in.
As she tried to drive away in his patrol car, Witte yelled at her to stop. Shocking footage shows the man following her car, opening her driver’s side door and trying to get her out of her car, but she hit the accelerator and drove into a shopping center parking lot. It is said that he jumped out at great speed.
Boone fled for several miles eastbound on East Highway 40 in a stolen sheriff’s vehicle, Woods said, before more officers arrived and gave chase.
The sheriff said she was traveling “well in excess of 100 mph” and was “driving erratically” in an attempt to avoid officers.
During the pursuit, Boone pulled onto the right shoulder of the highway in an attempt to pass a semi-truck. As he merged onto the road, he lost control and crossed the double yellow line into oncoming traffic.
She then collided head-on with a black pickup truck, Woods said.
When officers arrived at the wreck, Boone and the three occupants of the pickup truck were unresponsive.
Boone and two of the truck’s occupants, a 73-year-old male driver and a 72-year-old female passenger from Waterloo, South Carolina, were pronounced dead at the scene. The third person was rushed to a local hospital in critical condition, according to the sheriff’s office.
Woods said he and his agents felt “sheer panic” when they learned their patrol car had been stolen.
“We know what’s in the car. There’s a long rifle in there,” he said. “The moment she did that, she was a threat to human life, and just getting in her car was a threat. Think about that for a second. What do citizens think when they see that blue light shining down from the road? ?They think this person is a good person and not this horrible person.”
The carjacker was recently released from prison and has a long criminal history. Woods dramatically explained this at his press conference, holding up dozens of sheets of paper that appeared to be rap sheets.
The sheriff said Boone has 13 felonies and nine misdemeanors on his record, including two misdemeanor convictions.
In addition to several arrests across Florida, Boone was arrested three times in Marion County in 2020-2021.
She was convicted in Marion County for her previous arrest and sentenced to two years in prison in 2022.
Boone was also convicted in a different class in Orange County, but instead of ordering his sentences to begin after completing the two-year sentence he was sentenced in Marion County, the judge made the sentences run concurrently. That means she was given 30 months of credit, Woods said, because she served time on another conviction.
If the sentences were consecutive, Mr. Boone would still be serving his sentence. She was released from prison in recent weeks, but According to local outlet 352 Today.
“If this man had gone to prison, he wouldn’t have caused the deaths of two innocent people,” Woods said. “Girl, I don’t care about that.”
The outspoken sheriff revealed there was no fault of the deputy whose car was stolen.
“My deputy did nothing wrong,” he said in response to a reporter’s question, adding that the policy on leaving patrol cars “makes no sense.”
