High-speed crash in Harford County sends trooper to hospital

JOPPA, Md. - The unmarked Maryland State Police cruiser bears the damage from splintering a wooden fence along Old Joppa road where one of the rails pierced the front window threatening the life of Senior Trooper Jon Sawa.

"His hand may have helped deflect that.  It may have struck the radar unit in the vehicle, but in some providential way that fence post just missed his head," said Greg Shipley of the Maryland State Police.

State police say 22-year old John Jacob Nussle V of Joppa used his blue Chevy Cobalt to flash his lights and tailgate the cruiser on Mountain Road before defiantly pulling up beside the trooper, revving his engine and taking off.

The trooper chased the suspect for three miles before the crash in front of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

Harford County Sheriff’s deputies spotted the Cobalt and initiated a second chase before Nussle crashed his car on Singer Road.

Trooper Sawa, who comes from a family with a long line of service to the State Police, escaped his narrow miss with minor injuries.

Ironically, his crash comes almost 25 years after his father, Trooper First Class John Sawa, was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer on Interstate 95 near Havre de Grace.

"(It was) a very tragic situation, and one that greatly impacted the Maryland State Police family, but yet from that,  this young man decided to follow in his father's footsteps, his grandfather's footsteps, his uncles' footsteps and become a Maryland State trooper," said Shipley.

Unlike the accident that took his father’s life, the trooper who survived this crash says it was no accident.

Doctors at the Shock Trauma Center treated the trooper and he has since been released.

Nussle faces a series of charges including assault, malicious destruction of property and driving under the influence.