The driver of a SuperShuttle van suspected of hitting several vehicles between the District and Dulles International Airport did it because he was seeking fame, according to a law enforcement source. Investigators from at least three jurisdictions were lined up at the jail Monday to question 25-year-old Muhammed Teshale, of Alexandria, about nearly a dozen crashes that occurred Monday morning stretching from the Roosevelt Bridge to the airport. Police said the van bumped other moving vehicles off the roads and reached speeds up to 95 mph.
The crashes sent at least two people, including a toddler, to the hospital and caused major traffic delays on westbound Interstate 66.
Police officers at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority caught up to the SuperShuttle van parked in front of the main Dulles Airport terminal. Teshale was waiting outside the blue van.
“He said he did it to be famous,” a law enforcement source, who asked not to be identified because the investigation was ongoing, told The Washington Examiner.
Alcohol was not a factor, police said, and no passengers appeared to have been inside the van and along for the wild ride.
Virginia State police charged Teshale with one felony county of hit-and-run. Additional state charges are pending. Police from Arlington County and the airport were still investigating.
The incidents started before 9:30 a.m. on or near the Roosevelt Bridge in Arlington County.
At 9:24 a.m. on I-66, the van twice sideswiped the passenger side of a Dodge Charger, then rear-ended a Chrysler Pacifica, which slid off the road and into a ditch. Its driver and her one-year-old daughter were taken to a hospital with minor injuries, state police said.
The van then struck a taxicab from behind, and it ran off the right side of the road and struck a guardrail, police said. The taxicab driver and the people in the Dodge Charger escaped injury, police said.
Several minutes later, the van then rear-ended a 2006 Mercedes on the Dulles Connector Road. The driver was not injured.
Airport police received a call from a woman who said her car was hit by a SuperShuttle van that kept going on the Dulles access road. The van hit one last vehicle before pulling up to the main terminal, police said.
Teshale was arrested and was being questioned at the Fairfax County jail late Monday.
A call to SuperShuttle management Monday evening was not immediately returned.
