Holly MatkinCentreville, IL – An Illinois father said he blasted down the roadway at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour while police pursued him, as he rushed to get his choking toddler to the hospital on Thursday.
By the time Darius Hinkle and Donecia Pittman reached Touchette Regional Hospital with their one-year-old daughter, he had collected a slew of police officers who had been pursuing them for miles with their lights activated and sirens blaring, KTVI reported.
Hinkle admitted that he does not have a driver’s license and ignored the police, but said his only focus was getting help for his daughter, who was choking on a penny.
“The first thing in my mind was to get her to the hospital,” Hinkle said. “That’s my daughter. I wouldn’t want nothing to happen to her.”
When they pulled in at the hospital, they were surrounded by officers from multiple jurisdictions who didn’t know why the suspect was fleeing from them.
Police then ordered the couple to exit the vehicle with their hands up, Pittman told KTVI.
“I got out and I put my hands up and I yelled and I told the police, ‘My baby is choking!’” she said. “They was just worried about that fact that we were speeding.”
While the toddler was being treated by hospital staff, Hinkle was placed under arrest and hauled off to jail.
Doctors ultimately determined that the little girl would be fine.
When Pittman finished at the hospital and went to go bail Hinkle out of jail, she ran into another woman who was trying to do the same.
“I didn’t know who it was,” she told KTVI. “She said, ‘I’m the nurse from Touchette Hospital.’”
Pittman then learned that a group of nurses who treated her daughter had pooled their money to post Hinkle’s bail.
“I can’t even thank them enough,” Hinkle said.
Hinkle later blasted the officers who arrested him in a Facebook post.
“How could saving somebody life [my daughter at that] is worth going to jail over?” he railed in the post. “If you had or got kids you would’ve did the same thing…at least that’s what he told me when I got took to jail.”
“How could I be wrong for doing something that you said you would do too if it was yo kids wtf? That sound crazy!” Hinkle wrote. “My child in my arms & we get guns put to our head & shit like we just killed a mf or sum…somebody tell me where I went wrong!!”
“That s–t bogus as a mf doe gee,” Hinkle noted.
His supporters assured him that he did the right thing, and that the charges against him would be dismissed because he was “not guilty.”
Others urged him to try to get the officers who arrested him fired.
Do you think that Hinkle’s driving was appropriate, or should he have called an ambulance? We’d like to hear what you think. Please let us know in the comments.