Quad Cities cops injured in chase

Two Quad-Cities cops were injured and half-a-dozen squad cars hauled off to the body shop after a high-speed chase that took police across the Mississippi River bridge Tuesday from Illinois into Iowa. Moline Police Chief Gary Franque says police responding to a domestic-violence call in Moline spotted the suspect and followed him to the Interstate-74 bridge. Frank says the suspect started ramming the squad car — and kept on doing it. The suspect’s car ran up onto sidewalks, flattening his tires…but he didn’t stop till he got to the bridge over the Mississippi River. A squad car tried to block him on the bridge, but Franque says the driver ran it into a side rail on the bridge. The officer driving the car thought the suspect was going to stop, till he swerved and sideswiped the cruiser, then kept on running into the squad car. He also hit several other cars on the bridge. They crossed the river into the Iowa side of the Quad Cities, where Bettendorf Police Chief Phil Redington says he had officers waiting to take up the chase. He says by then the suspect was going very slow because his tires had come off the rims. Redington says the suspect’s car crashed into several police cars…and he got out to flee on foot. It was a dangerous situation, he says, for officers as well as any bystanders who might’ve gotten in the way. The man, identified as 19-year-old Robert Bomar of Moline, was caught and faces numerous charges. In all, six squad cars and three civilian cars were hit, and two Moline cops were injured.