Suspects in car chase released from hospital

Two people pursued in a car chase that ended in a dramatic crash near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Tuesday were released from the hospital that evening and are awaiting charges, state officials said.

A 20-year-old woman remained at Oahu Community Correctional Center, unable to post $2,000 bail for a contempt-of-court warrant, but a 20-year-old man, who was arrested for a $150 contempt warrant, was not in custody yesterday at the prison.

Keith Kamita, deputy director of law enforcement for the Department of Public Safety, gave details of how the chase unfolded starting about 6 p.m. Tuesday:

The woman was driving the vehicle, not the man, as originally reported, he said, and a deputy sheriff noticed the black Honda Accord as it crossed several lanes of traffic on the H-1 viaduct.

The deputy began following the vehicle after noticing its plates had expired.

Kamita said that while on the freeway, the black car hit the deputy's cruiser, possibly while changing lanes, and the deputy continued the pursuit.

The deputy followed the fleeing sedan off the Hickam offramp and toward the Pearl Harbor entrance gate when, just before the gate, the vehicle made a U-turn on Nimitz Highway and headed in the wrong direction on the one-way roadway. The vehicle collided with the deputy's cruiser as it approached from the opposite direction, and the crash caused the Honda to veer left and slam into a fence, stopping on its side against a wooden utility pole.

The cruiser careened in the other direction and came to a rest on the other side of a grassy median, a metal barrier and O'Malley Boulevard.