Police Arrest Man After Car Chase Driver Then Sent To Hospital After Causing Three-Vehicle Collision On North Division

Spokane police arrested a man Sunday afternoon after a car chase that ended in a three-vehicle accident in busy North Division traffic.

William A. Leverette, 34, of Spokane was in jail Sunday night after his stomach was pumped at Sacred Heart Medical Center earlier that day, police said. He had ingested heroin, police said.

A passenger in a second car also was taken to Sacred Heart, but not because of injuries suffered in the accident at Division and Euclid.

Joyce Hutchisson had burned her hand in a cooking accident and her husband was driving her to an emergency clinic when the accident occurred.

“I’m trying to keep slow and calm and easy, and don’t you know it, something like this happens,” said Dennis Hutchisson.

The chase began at 3:27 p.m. when police tried to pull over a car for crossing the center line three times near Monroe and Cora.

The car sped up, and police chased it at speeds up to 45 mph through stop signs and stop lights, Cpl. Cliff Walter said.

A man in the passenger’s seat escaped police by jumping out of the moving car in the 1200 block of West Cora, Walter said.

At 3:33 p.m., the car ran the stop sign at Euclid and Division and slammed into the front side of the Hutchissons’ car. The Hutchissons’ car spun and was hit by a pickup. Nobody in the pickup was hurt.

Minutes earlier, Joyce Hutchisson had been cooking dinner for her husband’s parents when grease splattered on her right hand.

She immersed her hand in a bowl of cold water as her husband drove to the clinic.

Both Hutchissons fell to the floorboards when their car was hit.

“The bowl of water went everywhere in here,” Dennis Hutchisson said.

After the wreck, police continued to chase the car, which had lost a tire.

A black line marked the car’s path a block down Division to the Kay Lon Garden. The car ripped up the chain-link fence and knocked over a power pole in front of the restaurant.

Leverette was then arrested and taken to the hospital. He was charged with attempting to elude an officer, causing a hit-and-run accident with injury, malicious mischief and escape, police said.

“One terrible thing after another,” Hutchisson said. “I couldn’t believe it when the guy kept going and the police followed him. He must have had a death wish.”