DAVIS COUNTY, Utah — A 17-year-old teenage girl is in custody after officials said she led a Utah Highway Patrol trooper on an extremely high-speed chase on the freeway through Davis County.
Officials said that in the early hours of Friday morning, a trooper was conducting speed enforcement on the southbound lanes of Interstate 15 at Hill Field Road in Layton.
That's when the trooper saw a silver Volkswagen Jetta "traveling at a very high rate of speed," UHP told FOX 13 News.
Eventually, the trooper was able to catch up with the driver in the Kaysville area and initiated a traffic stop, but the teen driver drove away, officials said.
The trooper initiated a pursuit, in which speeds reached over 100 miles per hour, UHP reported.
Eventually, the teen girl pulled the car over near Park Lane in Farmington and with the help of local law enforcement and the UHP trooper, she was taken into custody.
UHP stats show troopers have pulled over 3,047 drivers speeding over 100 miles per hour so far this year, and nearly 30,000 since 2017.
"the number one cause of fatal crashes here in Utah is speed," explained Sgt. Lawrence Hopper with the Utah Highway Patrol, "and if we could just get people to slow down, we'll have less fatalities, less serious crashes with injuries and people will get to where they're going and they'll get there safely.”
More than 30 percent of fatal crashes in the state over the past 7 years were speed-related. UHP implemented two new ‘perch’ positions just last month where troopers are highly visible in an effort to slow drivers down with just their presence.
“It doesn't matter what we're doing with those red and blue lights, and it doesn't matter what we're doing when those red and blue lights are activated, people just slow down,” said Hopper.
The highway patrol has a simple message that saves lives: slow down.
"You're not saving much time, but you're putting yourself at a huge risk when you speed and everybody else," Hopper said. "So go the speed limit, it's there for a reason and just be safe."
