LANDOVER, Md. — The girlfriend of an off-duty police officer who was in his cruiser early Saturday morning recalls the final moments before the crash that took the life of 26-year-old Officer Brennan Rabain.
The woman has told investigators that a speeding vehicle caught the officer’s attention before the deadly accident.
“The closest thing that we can get from her was that a vehicle was at a high rate of speed. The officer made a statement about ‘this guy’s going to kill someone,’” says Prince George’s County Police Chief Mark Magaw.
“He, what she thought, was initiating an action to try to slow that car down or stop him and just then, the car went out of control,” Magaw says.
Police say they still don’t know exactly what caused the deadly crash.
They say Officer Rabain left his residence around 3 a.m. Saturday, and was driving his girlfriend home when the accident occurred.
Police have made clear that department rules allow off-duty officers to transport individuals in the cruisers that are assigned to them.
Officer Rabain and his girlfriend were headed east on Greenbelt Road, less than a mile from her home, when the accident happened.
About a mile from the crash site, red light cameras captured the image of a dark-colored minivan and a white bus sharing the road with Rabain’s cruiser.
Police want to talk to the occupants of those vehicles as they continue to piece together the cause of the deadly crash.
Sharing video, looking for info about whether anyone may have seen other cars’ actions before our officer died. pic.twitter.com/cJXdlFAHtB
— PGPDNEWS (@PGPDNews) March 8, 2015
Officer’s Rabain’s cruiser, an older model 2006 vehicle, was equipped with a dash-mounted video camera that was broken and not capable of functioning at the time of the crash.
“The vehicle that was assigned to Officer Rabain, the video camera does not work,” Magaw says.
Rabain was assigned the vehicle on Feb. 16, just two weeks before the crash.
