Police Say This Guy Intentionally Hit a Cop With His Car

Maurice Taylor is a wanted man.

The Philadelphia Police Department is asking for the public’s help to locate the man wanted for running down a cop with his car on Monday night. Police have identified the suspect as 26-year-old Maurice Taylor from the 1500 block of Ellsworth Street in Point Breeze.

Around 6:40 p.m., police responded to a call for a person with a weapon on the 2600 block of Wharton Street. The suspect was described only as a black man wearing a black coat.

When they arrived on the scene, police were told that the person with a weapon was now a block away near the intersection of 27th and Earp streets, so they went looking for him there. Police quickly found two men fitting the description, and they say that one of them fled in a 2003 Volkswagen Passat when they tried to stop him. According to police, that man was Taylor.

He made his way north on 28th Street and then turned onto Sears Street, heading in the wrong direction on the one-way street. One police officer on Sears Street told him to stop, but instead of stopping, Taylor allegedly sped up and hit the cop.

“His body, according to witnesses, flipped in the air and then landed on the hood of the vehicle putting a large dent in the vehicle and then the vehicle continued to speed off,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told 6 ABC. The 26-year-old officer was transported to the hospital with a injuries to his head, leg and knee.

It turns out that Taylor wasn’t alone in the car. He got out of the car at the intersection of 22nd and Annin streets — less than a mile from the incident — leaving an 18-year-old woman in the front passenger seat and an 11-year-old boy in the back, both of whom reportedly told police that Taylor is a family friend.

This wasn’t Taylor’s first interaction with law enforcement. In 2010, he was sentenced to nine months probation for receiving stolen property. Two years later, he was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of children, terroristic threats, and simple assault.

At a trial in March 2013, Taylor was found not guilty on all of those charges, but then he was arrested just one month later and charged with aggravated and simple assault. The simple assault charge stuck, and Taylor was sentenced to two years probation in August 2013. He violated that probation earlier this year and was sentenced to one to two months in jail. According to court documents, Taylor hasn’t made a payment on the court costs in that case since 2013, still owing over $1,000.

Anyone with information in Monday night’s attack is asked to call South Detectives at 215-686-3013.

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