Franklinton board to be briefed on wreck

Before fatal wreck, pursuit forced 3 vehicles off road

FRANKLINTON -- Franklinton Town Attorney Mitch Styers plans to give the town board a closed-door briefing this evening about the police chase that led to the death of two Stem sisters and the suspect being pursued.

The attorney suggested the special meeting as he would any time the town could be sued.

Since Saturday, Franklinton police and town officials have been flooded with questions about a 15-mile chase that ended in a fiery crash on U.S. 15. Linsay Erin Lunsford, 18, and her sister Maggie Rose, 9, were on their way home from a shopping trip at the local Wal-Mart when the 1988 Pontiac driven by Guy Christopher Ayscue, the man fleeing the Franklinton police officer, crossed the center line on U.S. 15 and slammed into their Kia. The sisters, according to the state Highway Patrol, were killed instantly.

Mike Dunlap, the Franklinton officer who pursued the suspect from Franklin County into Granville County on narrow, two-lane roads, is on paid administrative leave. "You can see it on his face, his grief," Styers said Monday. "Those two girls' death has affected everybody."

Members of the Lunsford family grappled with their grief Sunday.

"The man who hit our daughters, Linsay and Maggie, was being pursued because he was driving erratically, not because he had just committed a violent crime," the family said in a prepared statement. "What our family does not understand is why, after a couple of miles into the chase, the officer did not discontinue the pursuit when it was evident the driver would not stop."

At least two cars and a truck were forced off the road during the police chase that led to three deaths Saturday afternoon, raising questions about whether the officer should have continued his pursuit of an erratic driver.

Police Chief Ray Gilliam and Styers spent much of Sunday reviewing 911 tapes and talking to witnesses who either saw the deadly pursuit or encountered an erratic driver before the chase began. The state Highway Patrol is continuing its investigation.

"It's a very tragic event," Gilliam said.

The Franklinton police chase policy, which was described but not released by Gilliam and Styers, gives officers discretion in deciding when to pursue a person suspected of committing a felony.

Dunlap was outside an Exxon convenience store at the edge of downtown Franklinton when he encountered Ayscue, the 38-year-old Henderson man who died while fleeing police.

The Exxon clerk had summoned Dunlap to the parking lot for a different reason. A videotape from the store's security camera shows the clerk moving toward Dunlap's car and, in the background, a 1988 Pontiac moving quickly through the intersection on the wrong side of the road.

Dunlap pulled out of the parking lot, according to his chief, turned on his siren and tried to get the Pontiac to pull over on narrow, two-lane N.C. 56. The rural route goes through the small downtown of Franklinton, about 30 miles north of Raleigh.

Three minutes into the chase, according to Styers, 911 logs show that a black truck, a black Mustang or Mercedes and another car pulled off to the side of the road to get out of the way of the fleeing suspect and the officer pursuing him.

Chief Gilliam said he would not know until the internal investigation is complete whether the officer should have called off the chase at that point. "Chases have always been challenged whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do," he said Sunday.

Dunlap has been with the Franklinton Police Department for nearly two years and has been a police officer for almost five years, the chief said.