Chase suspect identified

Records at the Oconee Detention Center identify a 25-year old Greenville man as the subject of a high-speed chase that covered parts of the Seneca and Walhalla areas and put a shudder into the general driving public.  A spokesman for the Oconee Sheriff says the charges and further information on law enforcement’s case against Christopher Timothy Baldwin will be released today.  Just before noon yesterday 9-1-1 received a call of an incident at the Game Stop at the Applewood Shopping Center.  A man is believed to have left the store with merchandise in hand and walked beyond all points of sale without paying.  An employee yelled out.  The man dropped some items and, as the employee tried to retrieve the items, the Sheriff’s Office was told the suspect raised his hand in what appeared to be an attempt to hit the store worker.  There then, the Sheriff’s Office believes, was an altercation between the suspect and a store customer.  The suspect got into a dark Toyota RAV4.  That started the chase in which deputies used stop sticks three times before the car was stopped on SC 183, the Walhalla-Pickens Highway near Wolf Stake Church Road.  At times, officers blocked intersections.  The chase entered Seneca twice, and the police chief says the Toyota hit one of his department’s unmarked vehicles.  Sheriff Mike Crenshaw admits that high-speed chases often amount to “no-win” situations for all involved—the suspect, the officers, and the general public.  If there’s an irony attached to what happened it is this:  Crenshaw had spent part of the morning yesterday in Pickens looking at new technology designed to make chases of this nature safer.