An SUV assigned to the Philly Sheriff’s Office ran a red light and caused a four-car crash. Then, the case disappeared.

Early one Saturday last August, a black 2024 Ford Expedition with police-style emergency lights was barreling through West Philly so fast residents could hear it coming from a block away.

The twin-turbocharged engine roared as the driver stomped on the gas, heading eastbound on Cedar Avenue. Seeing the flashing lights, some residents assumed that a cop in an unmarked car was rushing to a crime scene.

At 6:46 a.m., the Expedition blew a red light at 57th Street and was T-boned by a southbound Ford Fusion that had the green, according to a police report. The SUV careened into a parked Ford F-150 pickup truck belonging to Philadelphia’s Department of Sanitation. The pickup, in turn, struck a parked Buick.

The fact that a four-car wreck occurred at 57th and Cedar is not surprising; it’s a notoriously dangerous intersection.

But everything that happened after that Aug. 10, 2024, collision was highly unusual.

To this day, in fact, police investigators and City Hall officials are trying to get to the bottom of the crash.

According to the city, the car was a rental that had been assigned to the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office. It had been equipped with red-and-blue emergency lights and a siren, both of which were activated at the time of the collision, according to a police report.

Yet, the driver of the vehicle was not a sheriff’s deputy — or any other law enforcement official.

It was a young man in a white tank top, holding a dog, according to a police dispatcher. Neighbors later said the dog appeared to be a poodle. The pair fled the scene.

Even more puzzling, the incident seemed to elude a police investigation or scrutiny by city officials until this year — five months after the crash.

That’s because the Sheriff’s Office did not immediately report the theft or the crash to the city’s Department of Fleet Services, as all departments are required to do when leased vehicles are stolen or damaged, according to city officials.

It wasn’t until January that Fleet Services got notification the city-leased vehicle had been virtually destroyed. The city estimated the damage at $38,444.60, according to maintenance records obtained by The Inquirer through a right-to-know request.

Sheriff Rochelle Bilal would not disclose to The Inquirer who in her office the SUV was assigned to or why her office did not immediately notify city officials of the collision.

In a statement Monday, Bilal said the deputy it was assigned to was out of town at the time of the crash and “reported it stolen” to Philadelphia police upon returning home three days later, on Aug. 13.

It wasn’t until January, Bilal said, that she learned from Fleet Services that “no one within her chain of command had reported the incident to them.” Bilal said she then took “immediate action” and launched an internal investigation that is “currently ongoing.”

Another twist: The Philadelphia Police Department did not open an investigation of the crash, either, until January.

A police supervisor should have notified the department’s Crash Investigation Unit about the incident the morning it happened, under the protocol for crashes involving vehicles under city control.

“We’re doing an internal investigation now into what happened, and why those notifications weren’t made,” said Cpl. Jasmine Colón-Reilly, a Philadelphia police spokesperson.

It was unclear Monday whether police have found evidence that the SUV had been broken into, or whether it had been operated by someone with access to the deputy’s keys.

When an 18th District police officer pulled up to the wreck that August morning, about a half hour after sunrise, she saw what appeared to be a disabled police vehicle and sent out an “officer assist” call to the citywide police radio band.

But no officers were anywhere near the SUV. Instead, another officer called in a report of a young man leaving the scene, down Pemberton Street, a nearby side street.

“No report of any officers involved at this time,” the dispatcher later announced. “We are looking for a young Black male, short hair, white tank top with a dog.”

Residents near the intersection said last week that crashes there are common — both streets in that area are on the city’s list of the 12% of streets that see 80% of all traffic deaths — but the one from last August stuck out in their minds due to the bizarre circumstances.

“He shot right through that light and crashed into another car. Then the guy got out with a dog,” said Abdul-Kareem, a resident on the corner who declined to provide his last name because he didn’t want to be involved in a police investigation.

Abdul-Kareem, who was parked at the curb when the incident happened, said he could hear the Expedition’s engine well before he saw it coming. The collision was violent.

“He was flying,” he said. “It was bad.”

Another resident who lives across Cedar Avenue said that she was asleep at the time of the incident but that it woke her up. She looked out the window at what she assumed was a crash involving a police officer.

“I was like, ‘Is this a cop?‘” said the woman, who declined to provide her name. “Then I see him jump out with a dog.”

Both that woman and Abdul-Kareem said that they believed the dog was a poodle.

Abdul-Kareem said one officer on the scene told him that the driver who fled had been apprehended a couple of blocks away. He said that did not surprise him since so few people were outside that early on a Saturday and obviously the person they were looking for was carrying a dog.

But if the poodle-wielding man was apprehended by police, they didn’t record it in a police report. A police spokesperson said there had been no arrest.

News of the seven-month-old crash — and the Sheriff’s Office’s subsequent failure to report it ― has more recently made its way to senior staffers in Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration. But City Hall officials and police remain circumspect.

Sharon Gallagher, a spokesperson for the Managing Director’s Office said: “The Department of Fleet Services [DFS] oversees and monitors every leased vehicle for the City of Philadelphia and requires departments that have leased vehicles to report stolen or crashed vehicles to the Philadelphia Police Department and DFS immediately.”

That didn’t happen in this case, according to Parker spokesperson Joe Grace, who would say only that Fleet Services “received notice on Jan. 8, 2025, about the vehicle crash.”

Gallagher and Grace would not elaborate on the delay between the destruction of the SUV and the report to Fleet Services.

A city official who requested anonymity to speak freely said that notification came when the Sheriff’s Office requested a fresh vehicle from Fleet Services, prompting staff there to inquire about the status of the Expedition.

The SUV and two of the other three vehicles involved were so badly damaged they had to be towed from the scene, which qualifies as a reportable accident, according to police directives. A crash report should have been created within five days.

The same regulations also state that all crashes involving city vehicles — leased or owned — should further be reported by a supervising officer to the city’s fleet office and then investigated by the department’s Crash Investigation unit.

None of that happened, despite a beat cop documenting the initial incident and calling it in via police radio.

Police officials could not provide an explanation of why the regulations weren’t followed.

In addition to the wrecked Expedition, city records show that since the beginning of 2022, the Sheriff’s Office has reported 57 crashes involving city vehicles assigned to the office, totaling $167,000 in estimated damages.

The mystery is the latest mini-scandal for Bilal, whose office has come under increased scrutiny over chronic short-staffing, lengthy deed-processing delays for sheriff sales, misappropriated money, and questionable executive pay raises.

A panel of Philadelphia judges that administers the city courts system issued court orders in December and last month demanding that Bilal address deputy shortages that have led to a drastic increase in security incidents in court buildings.

Two weeks ago, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), which oversees the city’s finances, voted to recommend the abolition of the Sheriff’s Office, along with the Register of Wills, another independently elected office that has become synonymous with patronage hiring. The good-government group the Committee of Seventy recently released a similar recommendation.

City Council and Mayor Parker have largely avoided addressing problems in the sheriff’s office, despite a growing number of complaints.

Bilal, who took office in 2020 after winning the Democratic primary on a reform platform, has rejected calls for her office to be abolished, blaming PICA for a faulty analysis, a biased news media, and racist judges.

In a letter to The Inquirer last month, Bilal said she has “worked to restore public trust, improve security measures, and ensure fiscal responsibility.”

“Attempts to characterize my leadership as anything other than focused, strategic, and committed to public service are politically motivated,” the sheriff wrote.