Police are still trying to track down the person who drove a car through a crowd on Congress Street during Festival International
Although police initially told KATC there was no surveillance video of the incident, a photo was released today of this older model Chevrolet SUV.
Dozens of cameras were placed downtown for the festival. And now police say one of those cameras placed on Congress and Taylor St., caught the SUV.
"And so when you were initially told there was no video, that was a mistake and we apologize for that," said Chief Toby Aguillard, reversing the police department’s initial statement that the surveillance cameras did not catch the incident.
KATC obtained video from a downtown business, showing the SUV going down a crowded street.
Chief Aguillard confirmed those cameras store 36 hours of video. At the time of the incident, police were monitoring the cameras.
"The detective who viewed the cameras and noticed that there was a vehicle on the streets, notified the officers on the streets about what was going on so it was monitored in real time," he said.
Chief Aguillard said those cameras, which cost the city roughly $730, 000, are an invaluable resource.
"Well like for festival, for example, we deployed every spare camera that we had for the downtown area and the festival grounds, in an effort to just be on top of everything going on. So in the past year we’ve purchased four additional portable camera systems, those are the trailers that people see with the blue flashing lights on them. In addition to that, we have our command bus that has cameras, we have the pole cameras that already exist," he said.
Police are now trying to track down the person who drove the vehicle, which struck another vehicle while fleeing from police.
Lafayette Police have not identified him publicly, but they say they do know who he is.
"I think that we were able to make contact but I think at some point he realized they were the police and that’s when he took off… We got a lot of questions [when we find him]," he said.
Right now, the person is facing unspecified traffic violations which he’ll be cited for.
Also, contrary to initial reports, no pedestrian was injured in this incident.
