Truck Driver Faces Serious Charges After Killing 1, Injuring 2 in Police Chase

by Jana Ritter - Published: 7/11/2016

A truck driver has been charged with second-degree manslaughter after a driving rampage led to a police chase and left one person dead, two injured and 12 damaged vehicles in his wake.

                                                             

The incident occurred early Saturday morning (at around midnight) in Elizabeth, NJ. According to police, Danny Clyde Burnam (an out of state truck driver with both California and Colorado addresses) was driving a Freightliner cab-style commercial tractor near First Street and Elizabeth Avenue when he first hit a car. The driver was not injured by the accident and had tried to get Burnam to stop but he continued driving erratically, heading north on Elizabeth Avenue. Moments later, an off-duty Union County police officer spotted the tractor barreling across the intersection of North Broad and Elizabeth and tried to intervene, firing a single round from his service weapon. But Burnam continued to speed away and turned down North Broad Street, where he hit several parked and moving cars along the way. “He hit the car, he swung around and piled the rest of the cars right up against the building. One of them was my fiancé’s,” said a witness.

By the time Burnam reached the intersection of North Broad Street and Parker Road, police had set up a barricade attempting to stop him. However, the barricade did nothing to stop the truck driver and he simply barreled right through it. When police officers stationed at the barricade realized he wasn’t going to stop, they began shooting at him as he passed by and he was struck by one of the bullets. Still, Burnam refused to stop and about a half-mile from the barricade, he crashed head-on into a car, killing the adult male driver and injuring the two other occupants. “Bodies all over the place. People running and just the noise that it made. It was like a bomb,” said another witness. “I did not know what to think. I could not think that a truck could do that much damage.”

                                                            

Tragically, it was that final deadly crash that forced Burnam to a stop. He was arrested at the scene and taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries. According to Union County Prosecutor Grace Park, Burnam has been charged with aggravated manslaughter, vehicular homicide and reckless aggravated assault. He is being held on $2 million bail and Park says the fatal accident remains under investigation and they are also investigating the police response to the incident, as their job requires whenever a police officer fires a weapon.

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