One dead, five injured after stolen vehicle slams into Baltimore building, causing collapse

One person was dead and five more injured after a driver in a stolen vehicle crashed into a vacant building in Maryland, triggering its partial collapse, police said.

The incident unfolded in east Baltimore Wednesday night around 8:45 p.m., when officers spotted a car they believed to be stolen, Baltimore Deputy Commissioner Richard Worley told the Baltimore Sun. When they attempted to further investigate, the vehicle sped off, slamming into another vehicle before careening into a building on the southeast corner of North Wolfe Street and East North Avenue.

Both vehicles were occupied, though the building appeared to be vacant, police said.

Baltimore firefighters and medics immediately responded to the scene, with rescue crews desperately digging through the debris of the partially collapsed building. They were able to pull one person from the rubble, but he was pronounced dead on the scene.

He has been identified only as a 54-year-old male. Authorities believe he was a pedestrian, walking along the sidewalk when the chaos occurred.

Another five people — all of them occupants of the vehicles involved — were hospitalized in wake of the crash. Their conditions were not clear.

“I don’t know that we were pursuing at all, we attempted to stop it,” Worley said of officers’ attempt to pull over the stolen vehicle.

“That’s still under investigation, we’ll look at all the body-worn camera, any other video to see what in fact happened to cause the vehicle to take off.”

An investigation into the matter is ongoing.