Saturday, November 29, 2003

By Jim Six
jimsix@sjnewsco.com

The man who led a Bellmawr police officer on a high-speed car chase Tuesday that ended with two fatalities in Haddonfield had several outstanding warrants and no valid driver's license.

Bill Shralow, spokesman for Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi, confirmed five outstanding warrants for Gregory Ganski Jr. at the time of his death in Tuesday's crash. Ganski, 27, may have resided on North Almonesson Road in the Westville Grove section of Deptford Township, police said, though his address had been reported earlier as Meadows Drive in Williamstown.

Shralow said Ganski was wanted for simple assault and driving while suspended by Deptford Township, driving while suspended by Washington Township, failure to register a vehicle by Winslow Township, and hindering apprehension or prosecution, a disorderly persons offense, by Westville.

Deptford police reported 10 contacts with Ganski since 2001, most of them for criminal complaints connected to domestic violence including an arrest for aggravated assault in May.

Deptford police said the most serious warrant they had for Ganski at the time of his death was for $800, although they couldn't say Friday whether it was for a criminal or motor vehicle matter.

According to official accounts, Ganski was stopped on the Black Horse Pike shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday by Bellmawr Ptl. William Perna, 25, a three-year member of the borough's police department,

When Perna got out of his patrol car to walk toward Ganski's 1990 Ford Probe, Ganski backed the Ford toward the officer and then sped off.

Perna chased Ganski onto Interstate 295, then onto Warwick Road near the boundary between Haddonfield and Barrington, police said. On Warwick Road in Haddonfield, Ganski reportedly lost control of the Ford, which slid into a 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier operated by 58-year-old Thomas R. Fitzgerald of Magnolia.

Ganski died at the scene. Fitzgerald, considered an innocent victim pronounced dead at Cooper Medical Center in Camden at 7:50 p.m., was the uncle of a Deptford Township police records clerk, authorities said.

On Friday, Shralow indicated that Ptl. Perna did not know about the warrants for Ganski's arrest at the time of the vehicle stop. Perna has been placed on routine administrative leave

The Camden County Prosecutor's office has not yet disclosed the reason the officer stopped Ganski, the speed of the two vehicles involved in the chase, or whether the officer followed county and state policies for police pursuit.

"Investigators, including the county crash response team, are still gathering facts," said Shralow, the spokesman for the Camden County prosecutor.

An authority on police driver training, Sgt. Travis Yates of Tulsa, Okla., says that very few police academies provide lengthy training on pursuit driving. Yates, who has coordinated driver training of Tulsa police officers for about seven years, runs a Web site called www.policedriving.com.

"You give some training in the academy, but if a police officer gets in a pursuit years later, how much training has he had?" said Yates in a telephone interview Friday.

A patrol car is a potential weapon, he said, and departments say "Here are the keys" without the needed training.

"It puts the officers in a bad position," said Yates. "I think we're really putting officers at a disadvantage."