Police follow as guardsman takes personnel carrier on unscheduled deployment

The wayward M577, with a police escort, rolling down a Virginia highway Tuesday evening.

Just before 8pm on Tuesday, June 5, Joshua Phillip Yabut, a 29-year-old 1st Lieutenant in the Virginia National Guard, drove off the Guard's Fort Pickett training center in Blackstone, Virginia in an M577 command post vehicle. This unscheduled deployment was followed by one of the strangest police chases ever.

Yabut drove the tracked vehicle east on US Route 460 and then north on Interstate 95, followed by a swarm of Virginia State Police vehicles, reaching the M557's top-end speed of 40mph. He finally stopped the vehicle in the Fan district of Richmond, blocked in by police cars, and was apprehended at 9:40pm.

This is INSANE! Someone has hijacked a "Tank-like" vehicle from Fort Pickett and just drove it by our apartment! This is on Broad Street in the Fan. pic.twitter.com/EYfhFux1dk

- Parker Slaybaugh (@ParkerSlay89) June 6, 2018

The M577 is a variant of the M113 armored personnel carrier (APC), in use by the US Army since the 1960s, and exported widely to foreign militaries.

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