The tranquillity of Winchelsea was shattered last week by a speeding car, estimated to be travelling through the centre of the village at over 60mph, pursued by several police vehicles. The car had failed to stop when flagged down by the police.
In an attempt to lose them it swerved off the High Street into St Thomas’s Street, behind the Church, clipping a surprised pedestrian with its wing mirror. The car then shot across the junction into Friars Road, looking for an exit out of the village, only to find itself in a dead end.
The two occupants abandoned the car, but one was quickly apprehended by a decorator working on a nearby house. The other fled across country and reached Wickham Manor Farm, about a mile outside Winchelsea, where he knocked on the door of the farmhouse claiming he was lost and asking the farmer’s wife to call a taxi.
She instead closed the door and called the police. The fugitive ran off on to Pett Level. Some four or five hours later, having been hunted by a police helicopter, a cold, wet and miserable fugitive surrendered himself.
The startled residents of Winchelsea are thankful that no one was injured in the chase. Had it occurred a couple of hours earlier or in the mid-afternoon, it could have mowed down school children and parents outside the junior school in Friars Road.
Photo: Richard Comotto