Burglary suspects on the loose after car crashes into vet office (updated)

A car crashed into the side of Brainerd Hills Veterinary Hospital on East Brainerd Road today.
A car crashed into the side of Brainerd Hills Veterinary Hospital on East Brainerd Road today.

Updated

This story was updated at 2:43 p.m. to reflect additional details provided by police., and at 4:26 p.m. to correct the misspelling of Pamela Prince's last name.

A shower of fist-sized rocks sliced like shrapnel through the wall of Pamela Prince's office at the Brainerd Hills Veterinary Hospital, kicked up by the driver of a four dour sedan who was on the run from police and had lost control of his vehicle, bursting through a retaining wall on East Brainerd Road.

After the shower of fast-flying rocks came the car itself, which crunched into the side of the building, leaving pieces of the light-colored automobile strewn across the lawn and implanted in the building's wall.

It was not possible to immediately determine the make and model of the automobile due to the damage. A smashed TV lay on the ground next to the car, though it was not clear whether it flew out of the alleged burglars' trunk or was knocked out of Prince's office.

The police arrived and apprehended one suspect but were still searching for two more shortly after the crash, according to Hamilton County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Georgia D. Short.

Short said in a release that the incident is believed to stem from a call of a burglary in progress at 9522 Fuller Road.

The suspects were described as three black men who allegedly took several items from the Fuller Road home and left in a white sedan with tinted windows, officials said. Deputies spotted the suspects' vehicle near East Brainerd Road and Gunbarrel Road.

"Deputies attempted to stop (the) vehicle which fled and wrecked into a house at East Brainerd Road/Roselawn," officials state.

One of the three men was injured and taken by police to the hospital for treatment of what were described as minor injuries.

Brainerd Hills Veterinary Hospital staff said Prince wasn't in the office at the time, thanks to the timing of the crash on the day after Christmas. The doctors had planned to go home early on Friday and were working a light day.

"All the animals are OK," said John Haddock, a doctor of veterinary medicine at the animal hospital.

Haddock said the hospital has insurance, and said workers are already scheduled to patch up the building to keep out the elements.

Meanwhile, authorities continue to search the area for the two men still at-large.

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