You’d expect a mother to be protective of her children and to avoid putting them in risky situations. That doesn’t apply to Brandi Cottrell, from New Castle, Pennsylvania.
She was arrested at the end of last week, after leading police on a wild chase through a residential neighborhood, while her 2 kids were in the backseat. The reason she tried to flee the cops is still to be determined, WPXI reports.
Cottrell already had a pending arrest warrant in her name, for felony child endangerment charges, so she must have been thinking about it when she decided to push her Ford as fast as she could, in an attempt to escape the cops. In doing so, she completely ignored the screams of her children in the back, aged 5 and 1.
The wild chase led them through a neighborhood with narrow streets, with Cottrell doing 40mph. She rammed a police cruiser head-on and connected with another in her attempt to escape, causing considerable damage to her car.
Bobby Salem, chief of the New Castle Police Department, says the children weren’t injured during the chase, but the very fact that someone would put them through this is very upsetting.
“No regard for their safety,” Salem says. “It’s troubling a little bit, the fact that they had kids in the car.”
He also believes Cottrell had a more serious reason to try and escape the police: there was a woman passenger in the car and she was had threatened her with a gun.
“She demanded that the driver keep driving during the pursuit,” he explains. “She didn’t pull it on her, she showed it. I think she was scared of getting caught with it.”
Cottrell is now in custody, awaiting charges, while her children have been placed with Social Services. Salem doesn’t say what became of the female passenger with the gun.
Cottrell already had a pending arrest warrant in her name, for felony child endangerment charges, so she must have been thinking about it when she decided to push her Ford as fast as she could, in an attempt to escape the cops. In doing so, she completely ignored the screams of her children in the back, aged 5 and 1.
The wild chase led them through a neighborhood with narrow streets, with Cottrell doing 40mph. She rammed a police cruiser head-on and connected with another in her attempt to escape, causing considerable damage to her car.
Bobby Salem, chief of the New Castle Police Department, says the children weren’t injured during the chase, but the very fact that someone would put them through this is very upsetting.
“No regard for their safety,” Salem says. “It’s troubling a little bit, the fact that they had kids in the car.”
He also believes Cottrell had a more serious reason to try and escape the police: there was a woman passenger in the car and she was had threatened her with a gun.
“She demanded that the driver keep driving during the pursuit,” he explains. “She didn’t pull it on her, she showed it. I think she was scared of getting caught with it.”
Cottrell is now in custody, awaiting charges, while her children have been placed with Social Services. Salem doesn’t say what became of the female passenger with the gun.