NC woman backed over arresting officer in her SUV. She’ll spend 9 years in prison.
.jpg "A Charlotte woman will serve almost a decade in prison for striking a law enforcement officer with her SUV in 2019 as she tried to avoid arrest. She is identified as Tamara McClellan.")
A Charlotte woman accused of backing over a law enforcement officer with her SUV as she fled arrest will spend more than nine years in federal prison after pleading guilty to assault with a deadly weapon.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn sentenced Tamara Devonna McClellan, 32, to 115 months, stemming from her violent 2019 confrontation with a federal probation officer outside McClellan’s home.
According to documents filed in the case, U.S. probation officers had gone to McClellan’s residence on Dec. 20, 2019, to arrest her on charges that she had violated her supervised release from an earlier drug trafficking conviction.
In an attempt to escape, documents say, McClellan climbed into the driver’s side seat of an SUV parked in her driveway. When an unidentified female probation officer slipped a handcuff on one of McClellan’s wrists, McClellan threw the vehicle into reverse and fled.
The SUV struck the officer, running over her leg and leaving her with serious injuries, said Greg Forest, chief probation officer for the Western District of North Carolina. She has since recovered and returned to her duties.
McClellan kept going. Her abandoned vehicle was found a few blocks away. She was arrested four days later on Christmas Eve in Rustburg, Va., about 200 miles north of Charlotte.
Last March, she pleaded guilty to the assault with a deadly weapon of a federal officer in the performance of her official duties inflicting body injuries.
As part of her plea deal, prosecutors dropped drug trafficking and firearm charges.
Law enforcement officers being dragged or struck by cars driven by suspects has become an increasingly common hazard of the job. In 2021 alone, officers have been dragged, struck or forced to leap from moving cars in St. Louis, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Cleveland, among other cities.
