Two car thieves deliberately drove their stolen vehicle into a group of joggers on Sunday, police said.
Vincent Anderson, 19, and Marcus Jones, 27, have both been taken into custody, charged with multiple offences.
They allegedly stole a car in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and rammed it into the group, later describing their stunt as ‘fun’ and likening it to the video game Grand Theft Auto.
Three of the six joggers were injured, one of them requiring hospital treatment.
Anderson was driving the 1994 Ford Thunderbird, stolen just before 7am. Around 10 minutes later the victims called 911 and the pair were arrested as they tried to flee the scene.
Anderson was charged with three counts of first-degree assault, tampering with a motor vehicle and resisting arrest, as well as a misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident.
His passenger, Jones, will answer to second-degree vehicle tampering and resisting arrest. He was held on a $15,000 cash-only bond; Anderson’s was listed as $75,000.
One of the injured runners, Ron Rosati, described how the car cut across lanes to hit them.
He told semissourian.com: ‘I can’t understand why someone would do that. It was just random. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
‘But it wasn’t an accident. It was some crazy guy just acting crazy.’
‘If it had been a Hummer or a truck, we would not have been on the car,’ he added. ‘We would have been under it.’