North Carolina Man Fleeing Police Swims Into Ocean, Gets Chased By Shark

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

A North Carolina man on the run from the cops decided to ditch the police by swimming into the ocean. Unfortunately for the miscreant, the ocean has no shortage of sharks, and as he found out rather quickly, sharks may see a human swimming furiously as prey. The shark joined the cops in taking up the chase.

It didn’t end well.

As Port City Daily reports, 20-year-old Zachary Kingsbury, of Lynnwood, Washington, was in Surf City, North Carolina for some reason on Wednesday. At about 4:15 p.m., police stopped him in a routine traffic stop. When they asked him to step out of the car, Kingsbury allegedly took off on foot.

As you can guess, Surf City is called Surf City for a reason (hint: it’s on the ocean), and there aren’t a lot of places to run. Lacking any better ideas, police say, Kingsbury ran onto the beach and into the water. Then he started swimming.

At this point, it bears wondering what Kingsbury hoped to accomplish by swimming for it. Did he think he’d swim to Bermuda and just lay low until things died down? Perhaps he thought the cops would congratulate him for thinking outside the box and just let him go?

Zachary Taylor Kingsbury, of Lynnwood, Wash. was arrested today in Surf City after fleeing into the ocean from police, prompting 4-hr search pic.twitter.com/62lDWZ4mZ1

— Hannah DelaCourt (@HDelaCourtSN) August 31, 2017

None 0f those things happened, of course. While the Surf City cops may not be trained in chasing suspects into the water, they do have drones. And those drones followed Kingsbury as he swam a good 4,000 feet (that’s almost a mile) into the water over the course of an hour.

Besides being unable to escape the Long Arm of the Law, Kingsbury quickly found a much more serious problem in the ocean with a shark.

Police say footage from their drone clearly shows a shark following Kingsbury as he swims for his life. Although you can’t see any sharks in the video embedded below, you can clearly see Kingsbury – who, let’s face it, is a remarkably good swimmer – trying to make a break for it.

Once the shark became an issue, says Surf City Police Chief Ron Shanadan, the chase became a “rescue operation.”

Thanks to the Surf City P.D.’s Marine Unit, plus help from nearby Topsail Beach as well as the Coast Guard, authorities were able to safely wrangle the perp out of the water and back to safety.

Kingsbury was arrested and booked into the Pender County Jail. He’s been charged with resisting arrest and possession of marijuana and methamphetamine, and he is being held on a $20,000 bond.

[Featured Image by Jrcasas/Thinkstock]