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WINCHESTER, Ky. — Winchester Police Chief Travis Thompson is defending his department's decision to join a high-speed, multi-county pursuit that began with a stabbing in Paris on Thursday and ended with a PIT maneuver and an arrest in Mount Sterling.
Story updated Dec. 13, 2024.
It started as a Thursday-afternoon stabbing call for Bourbon County sheriff's deputies. When they reached the scene, they found a victim seriously wounded and in need of hospital care. Sheriff Brent Wilson said the circumstances of the attack were still being looked into, but the immediate problem turned out to be the suspect's getaway.
Authorities say 20-year-old Juan Jose Garcia Ponce climbed into the victim's car and drove off before officers could arrest him. That decision set off a chase spanning three counties.
"A pursuit started that went through multiple jurisdictions involving multiple police officers," Wilson said.
The route traced U.S. 460, the two-lane road that strings together Paris, Winchester, and Mount Sterling through central Kentucky's horse country. It's a corridor that shifts quickly from farm gates and stone fences to subdivisions and strip-mall traffic, so the pursuit had a changing character every few miles.
Winchester's call
Winchester sits in the middle of that corridor, which made the city a likely point on any escape path. When Clark County dispatch alerted Chief Thompson that a felony suspect was heading into town on Paris Road, he moved officers into position along the most probable route.
They didn't have to wait long. Garcia Ponce came through at 70 mph in a 45 mph zone. Winchester officers attempted a traffic stop. He refused to yield.
Thompson said joining a pursuit is never an automatic decision for him. He weighs the suspected offense against the posted speeds, the time of day, and the kind of roads involved. In this case, he said, the offense made the call clear: Garcia Ponce was wanted for attempted murder, among other charges.
"It was a very violent offense; it was a violent felony, so we felt that it was appropriate to try to get this individual into custody," Thompson said.
High-speed hazard
The chase wasn't just long — it was fast. Thompson said most of it ran at speeds between 70 and 100 miles per hour. On roads posted at 45 or 55 mph, a car moving that fast leaves little margin for error. At 100 mph, a passenger vehicle covers nearly 150 feet every second; braking distances stretch, reaction times shrink, and even a routine lane change can turn deadly.
The court record reflects the danger. According to three arrest citations, Garcia Ponce caused multiple crashes during the pursuit. One collision involved two passenger cars. Another damaged a police cruiser. Nobody was killed, but Thompson said the possibility of a much worse outcome never left his mind.
"Always in the back of my mind is that innocent family that's in a vehicle traveling down the road, abiding by the law, and then this comes along and causes a wreck and injures or kills somebody," Thompson said. "So it's just how bad do we need to get this person off the street?"
End of the road
The pursuit came to a close in Mount Sterling, where Paris police officers executed a PIT maneuver — the precision immobilization technique, a trained tactic that uses a controlled bump behind a fleeing vehicle's rear wheel to spin it to a stop. Done properly, it ends a chase in seconds rather than miles.
Garcia Ponce's car was disabled, and officers arrested him at the scene. He was jailed in Montgomery County pending court proceedings.
Charges stacking up
Garcia Ponce now faces a dozen charges from the episode, including attempted murder, reckless driving, wanton endangerment, assault, and evading police. Beyond the violent offenses, the list includes a series of traffic and flight counts — evidence that the way he fled, not just the fact that he fled, became part of the legal case against him.
Kentucky law treats attempted murder as a Class B felony, punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison upon conviction. Wilson said additional charges are expected as investigators continue working through the crashes and the original stabbing.
A correction
Winchester police initially told reporters that the stabbing victim had died from their injuries. The Bourbon County Sheriff's Department later corrected the record: the victim survived and was stable at the hospital.
Thompson said his department was given wrong information while the events were still unfolding, and it has since been corrected in official reports.
A wider debate
Episodes like this one feed an ongoing discussion in law enforcement about when pursuits are worth the risk.
Kentucky does not impose a single statewide chase policy. Individual agencies set their own standards, and in most departments, supervisors have the authority to end a pursuit at any point if conditions become too dangerous. The International Association of Chiefs of Police urges agencies to require officers to keep weighing the seriousness of the suspected crime against the threat the chase poses to the public — not just at the start, but mile after mile.
The stakes are measurable. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's pursuit data shows hundreds of deaths every year tied to police chases, with a significant share of them people who had nothing to do with the incident.
Some larger Kentucky agencies have tightened their pursuit rules in recent years after high-profile crashes and legal settlements. The policy pendulum has also swung the other way nationally — departments that restricted chases have sometimes loosened them again after suspects escaped and committed worse crimes. For Thompson, this case followed the logic from the opposite direction: the suspect was wanted for a violent felony, and letting him keep driving carried its own risk to the public.
What happens next
Pursuits of this scale typically trigger an internal review at the departments involved. Supervisors go back through dispatch audio, radio traffic, and camera footage to assess whether each decision along the route made sense. That review, not just the arrest itself, will be part of the follow-up in coming days.
Winchester police did not release further details about the initial stabbing, citing the ongoing investigation.
Thompson, for his part, said the outcome is what matters: the chase ended with a man wanted for attempted murder in custody and no one killed in the process.
"It was kind of hectic, but we got through it, and it was a successful outcome, and I'm glad he's off the street," Thompson said.
