Police: Springfield man, 20, claimed to be police

A 20-year-old Springfield man who witnesses said threatened and pursued another man at high speed, caused a wreck and claimed he was a police officer stands charged with three felonies.

Cyrus Peck, of the 900 block of Gothic Street, is charged with one count of impersonating a peace officer and two counts of felonious assault stemming from the incident Wednesday night that also involved gunfire, Springfield police said in an incident report made public Thursday.

According to a preliminary police investigation, several phone calls began coming into the police division dispatch center at about 9:30 from residents who said they heard gunshots coming from one of two vehicles speeding through the area of South Limestone and Liberty streets.

Minutes later, police received word that one of those vehicles — a red car — had collided with a motorcycle in the 2100 block of Limestone. At the crash scene, police found a black handgun in the red car that was being driven by Peck. The handgun turned out to be a BB gun.

Meantime, the man driving the vehicle being chased — a yellow Ford Ranger pickup — had parked at a nearby Swifty gas station. He was 19-year-old Micah Myers of Springfield.

Myers told police the man in the red car cut him off somewhere on South Yellow Springs Street and Euclid Avenue, got out of his car and slammed his hands on his hood as he made threats about money Myers supposedly owed him.

The man in the red car left, Myers said, but began chasing Myers again at high speed throughout the south side of the city, firing shots at his truck.

Myers said the man in the red car rammed his truck at least five times and at one point pulled up beside him and said, “You can’t run from me because I’m the police and you’re going to jail if you run.”

According to police, the car-motorcycle collision occurred as Myers raced along South Limestone to get away from the red car. The man on the motorcycle, 33-year-old Michael Newman of Yellow Springs, was not seriously injured, according to police at the scene.

Police took Myers back to the accident scene, where he identified Peck as the man in the red car.

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