Flagstaff Police Officer Injured After Head-On Collisions With An Impaired Driver

A Flagstaff Police officer is recovering at Flagstaff Medical Center after being involved in a multiple head-on collisions Saturday with an impaired driver. Police were called to the Safeway Center Parking lot on the 15-hundred block of Cedar Avenue at around 2 p.m. on reports of an intoxicated man trying to start fights with people in the parking lot. When officers arrived, they saw a red pickup truck driving recklessly, hitting a light pole and a building. An officer tried to stop the vehicle and prevent him from leaving the parking lot, however he made it through and fled into the Shadow Mountain neighborhood. The suspect vehicle then hit a police vehicle head-on at Cedar Avenue and Rose Street and continued moving. The suspect vehicle circled back and hit the officer’s vehicle again, head-on, at Rose Street and Dortha Avenue. As officers tried to barricade him in the area, the suspect drove his vehicle onto a sidewalk and hit the same officer’s vehicle for a third time. The vehicle drove away and finally law enforcement was able to stop it in the 44-hundred block of North Hamblin, but not before he hit another vehicle in the process. Police arrested 23-year-old Jerrad Steve Bigman without further incident. He was booked into the Coconino County Detention Facility on multiple charges including driving while impaired and aggravated assault. The officer is being treated for non-life threatening injuries as a result of the crashes with Bigman.