Crime & Safety

Victims Pursued Robber in Wild Car Chase, Police Say

Attempted scam on Morton Street led to car chase and wild confrontation in West Bethlehem, according to court papers.

Written and reported by Jack Tobias

A wild series of events Sunday afternoon that began when a man borrowed a flip phone on the South Side and offered a Batman backpack as “collateral” escalated into a car chase that ended in West Bethlehem after the man who borrowed the phone allegedly struck a woman with his car.

Court records say Marshall Sutphen, 20, of 508 E. Fourth St., who may have been drunk during the incident, allegedly did the following:

  • Around 5:30 p.m., he borrowed the phone from a man standing outside the Pantry 1 Food Mart, 25 E. Morton St., made a call from the back of the man's car, then convinced the man to let him take the phone to a nearby pizza shop so his sister could use it. He offered his black Batman backpack as “collateral” for borrowing the phone.
  • The phone owner, by now suspecting a scam, watched as Sutphen entered Campus Pizza, 22 E. Fourth St., quickly left and got into a red 1987 Volkswagen Jetta parked outside.
  • The phone owner ran toward the Jetta and struggled with Sutphen. The phone slipped out of Sutphen’s hand onto the street, but Sutphen grabbed $80 in cash that the phone owner was holding. Sutphen then drove away.
  • The phone owner followed him in a car driven by a female whose relationship to the man was not given. They saw the Jetta northbound on the Fahy Bridge and a short time later spotted it at Eighth Avenue and Union Boulevard.
  • They pulled their car in front of the Jetta, which wasn’t able to turn around in part because of surrounding traffic. Sutphen then stepped on the accelerator and hit the other car twice. The woman ran out, reached through the Jetta’s open driver’s side window and grabbed Sutphen’s shirt and arm in an attempt to stop his car.
  • But Sutphen again drove forward, hitting the woman and knocking her to the ground. She was not seriously hurt, suffering only a minor laceration to her right elbow. She and the other man saw Sutphen drive north on Eighth Avenue and lost sight of him.
  • Once city police got involved, however, they discovered both parties came to rest just a block or so from each other. Officer Dale Host writes in a criminal complaint that he found Sutphen standing next to the Jetta at the CVS, 1457 Eighth Ave. The woman and other man had stopped their car at the Wawa, 1584 Eighth Ave.
Police asked Sutphen to perform field sobriety tests. He showed “signs of impairment” and was taken into custody on suspicion of DUI, the complaint says.

In the Jetta, police found a rolled-up gray T-shirt Sutphen was wearing during the incident. Inside the T-shirt they found brass knuckles.

The Batman backpack was inside the other car. Police found a hypodermic needle inside the backpack, the complaint says.

Sutphen was charged with robbery—a level-three felony—as well as DUI, theft by unlawful taking, recklessly endangering another person, prohibited offensive weapon and possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia.

An information sheet in Sutphen’s file says that for one week, he has been living at 8009 Kings Highway in New Tripoli in northwestern Lehigh County.

He was arraigned Sunday night by on-duty District Judge Robert Hawke of Lehigh Township and committed to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $35,000 bail.


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