Wild chase of wrong-way Highway 101 driver ends in Sebastopol shooting - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies shot and critically injured a wrong-way driver who rammed three deputies in a Sebastopol parking lot after a high-speed chase that started Wednesday night when the woman was spotted driving in reverse on Highway... The driver, whom police identified as Karen Janks, 46, was shot an unknown number of times and was undergoing treatment at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, sheriff’s Lt. Darin Dougherty said. Janks’ mother, reached at home late Thursday, said she understood her daughter’s prospects for survival were not good. Santa Rosa Police Lt. Rainer Navarro said Janks was a transient from elsewhere in the Bay Area and that it was unclear what brought her to Sonoma County. But her mother, Gail Janks of San Mateo, disputed that characterization and said her daughter, an optician and the mother of a 19-year-old woman, had recently moved to Santa Cruz after a run of bad luck that included the loss of a job she had held... 12 roadside video Janks posted of herself on YouTube, soulfully singing a New Testament ballad, “was how she prayed,” her mother said. “It was a series of events that left her vulnerable,” Gail Janks said. In the minutes preceding the shooting, Janks was observed “driving erratically, upward of 100 mph, on the highway,” said Navarro, whose agency has taken. Source: www.pressdemocrat.com
