A driver in a jeep crashed through six garage doors at the facilities of the Capital Region Fire Department on Skógarhlíd in Reykjavík last night. During the ensuing police chase the man damaged two police vehicles and a private car.
Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
The car chase ended with the man’s arrest at the police station on Hvefisgata. He had driven there, apparently to crash into the building, Morgunbladid reports.
At the Skógarhlíd fire department all of the doors the man struck are now unusable but one, which was open during the attack.
“A number of our vehicles are now stuck inside the building. [The doors] cannot be opened,” fire marshal Jón Vidar Matthíasson told Fréttabladid.
Firefighters tried to stop the man by driving into his jeep with emergency vehicles, but he just drove on with a punctured tire. He then called a journalist at Vísir, Hafsteinn Gunnar Hauksson.
“He called and demanded coverage on [television channel] Stöd 2. He said that he had had enough, explaining that he had unresolved issues with the police, that the police had hit and disabled him. He had then been robbed and the police wouldn’t do anything about it,” Hauksson said.
Before the police chase ended, the man called the journalist again, now claiming that he was driving a two-ton jeep.
“He talked about crashing into the police station on Hverfisgata. He said he was going to kill police officers and harm them,” Hauksson added. “I tried to convince him not to and said that if he needed attention he should call us back in the morning.”
Kristján Ólafur Gudnason, the interim police chief, told Morgunbladid the man would remain behind bars during the night and that his case is being investigated. He wouldn’t make any comments on the motives behind the man’s actions.
