Car chase in South Austin caught on camera

AUSTIN, Texas – A police chase was caught on camera in a south Austin park. A witness said the suspect jumped out of a moving car and ran away.

Recording tricks on a bicycle at Gillis Neighborhood Park on a Monday afternoon last month turned into video evidence of what witness Mikee Saunders calls a police chase.

“It was my first time at the park, and I set up my tripod to film my tricks so I could watch them later, and I happened to have it on the whole time and didn’t realize it,” Saunders says.

Saunders said he heard police sirens in the distance and was confused when he saw a man jump out of a moving car.

“I thought he was in trouble with someone and they were going to shoot. I thought at first they were going to shoot, that’s what I thought, gunshots or something, then I realized the cops were behind him and everything happened,” Saunders said.

In the video, the car can be seen continuing to drive as the driver jumps out and begins fleeing police on foot.

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“The car pulled into the dead end here in the park and the police came running right after him. I made the connection, and he was already in a police chase,” Saunders said.

He said if the driver had arrived a minute earlier, park visitors could have been injured.

“People are walking down this trail here, and I noticed this was a couple with their baby or young child, and they had just walked down. Sixty seconds earlier in this video, they had just walked out with their child and barely missed him,” Saunders said.

Saunders said there was no one else in the car during the chase.

“There’s a creek right here with a tunnel and apparently it hit those tunnels and went this way, along Bouldin Creek. They were there for a second and the officer pulled up with a K9 unit, and they went back there for a minute and then they left. I wonder if they caught him or what’s going on with that, but I haven’t heard anything,” Saunders said.

FOX 7 Austin has reached out to Austin police and is awaiting a response on whether a suspect has been taken into custody.