CHESTERFIELD, Va. --Counterfeit bills have been passed at several Chesterfield businesses recently and police together with the Secret Service are checking to see if most of the cases can be connected.
Wednesday, as a suspect was whisked away in the back of a cruiser, and as forensic officers and police recover evidence from a crashed car, Stephen Kennedy breathed a sigh of relief.
"I'm alive. I'm lucky,” Kennedy said. "I was on my way to the chiropractor."Well, it wasn’t the back pain relief he was hoping for. "I pulled up in line at the light and wasn't there five seconds when I got slammed in the back," he said.Police say the driver of the car that struck Kennedy’s was trying to elude them after a call for counterfeit bills came in.
Police say the U.S. Secret Service is also involved in the investigation.
"I saw them going one direction,” Kennedy said. “I didn't hear them coming my way but a lot of them were around."
A clerk at the West Hundred Road Circle K said the suspects spent their bogus bills there around 2:30 Wednesday afternoon. He said the bill passed a scan test but after feeling the paper, he called the police.
Chesterfield Police say the suspect car was seen in the Rite Aid parking lot down the street but officers couldn't catch up to the driver until after he left a nearby neighborhood.
That's when they say the suspect wouldn't stop, until losing control and slamming into the back of a truck that hit another truck in front.
Eventually the fleeing vehicle was stopped by a power pole.
"His truck behind me went flying up in the air and I tried rolling up, but he hit me," said Kennedy.
Hundreds of dollars’ worth of bogus bills were used at Rite Aid and a manager at a nearby Lowes says they've been targeted, too, sources said.
