Baby dies in escape attempt

In spite of a desperate rescue attempt, a sixteen month old baby was killed when the vehicle she and her mother were riding in plunged into the river at the end of Pollard Rd. in Kodak Saturday night, during a highspeed chase with Deputy Blaine Lewis of the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department. Lewis was sitting in his patrol car in the gravel parking lot at the Kodak fire station at 11:37 p.m., when a black Ford Probe, driven by Christopher Wayne Adams, 30, of Kodak, drove into the parking lot and almost hit Lewis’ car. The Probe peeled out of the parking lot, turning onto Kodak Rd. “Blain said Adams just spun around in the gravel and got sideways in the road,” Sheriff Bruce Montgomery told The Herald. “Blaine started after him, but said he never did get close enough but to see the tail lights.” Deputy Lewis continued to pursue the Probe onto Bent Rd. and then onto Pollard Rd., at which time Adams turned off his vehicle’s lights. “Blain followed the dust all the way to the end of Pollard Rd. and didn’t see the car. He turned around and as he came back up the road, the mother of the child was standing in the road wet,” said Montgomery. “She was hysterical and Blain said he really couldn’t get much out of her. About that time Sergeant Robertson arrived on the scene and they determined that the baby was strapped in the car in a child seat under fifteen feet of water.” The two deputies removed their gear and jumped into the river in a frantic bid to save the child. According to Montgomery, “They took their vests off and their gunbelts and stuff and went in, but the water was so swift they couldn’t get to the child. [Because] the river was running full, they was generating power, or letting the water out of the lake.” By the time a wrecker pulled the Probe from the water, the child had been submerged for approximately thirty minutes, according to Montgomery. Adams, who fled the scene on foot after escaping from the vehicle, was arrested last night in Jefferson County. He is being charged with vehicular homicide, evading arrest and reckless endangerment. He is being held on $150,000 bond.