‘A fight for your life’: Richland deputy recalls chase, struggle captured on ‘Live PD’

Senior Deputy Chris Mastrianni was just as shocked as viewers across the country when a man crawling out of an overturned car slung a toddler into the air, then whipped her little body around while fighting with Mastrianni after a high-speed chase.

People watched the harrowing scene earlier this month on live TV.

“There’s no way to train for a situation like that,” Mastrianni told The State newspaper in an interview Wednesday. “My first instinct was, get that child away from him as quickly as possible.”

The July 8 scuffle followed a high-speed pursuit and crash and aired on “Live PD,” the A&E documentary series that follows in real time law enforcement agencies around the country, including the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, to give viewers a live look at police work on Friday and Saturday nights.

A chase, a crash and a fight

Mastrianni, a four-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, was among the officers responding around 9 p.m. to a large party that had gotten out of hand near Furwood Circle and Pelican Drive, in the Haskell Heights area of North Columbia.

While en route, Mastrianni was alerted to a silver SUV leaving the area. When he tried to pull the car over for not using a turn signal, the vehicle took off.

The chase spanned several miles and reached speeds of more than 90 mph as the suspect, 22-year-old Bryan Martin, sped down Monticello Road and then North Main Street toward the city, at one point driving off the roadway to pass a car.

“Shockingly enough in situations like this, when you are in a vehicle pursuit and they wreck, a lot of times they do flee on foot,” Mastrianni said of what he expected to see after pulling up to the car seconds after it overturned on Elmore Street. “I thought he was going for a weapon. I was completely shocked and couldn’t believe when he pulled the child out.”

Mastrianni had his hand on his service weapon as he approached the car. But after the toddler was slung into the air as her father crawled out of the wrecked car, the deputy immediately grabbed him and tried to get him to release the girl, shouting repeatedly, “That’s your baby!”

‘It felt like forever’

Law enforcement officers in training face a myriad of scenarios with varying circumstances, but none of that training offered a scenario like the one that unfolded that night.

Deputies have pepper spray, a stun gun, a firearm and a baton on their belt, but Mastrianni said each of those could have harmed the girl.

“You just kind of revert back to what you know, and hopefully you can handle that situation accordingly,” he said. For the former college wrestler, that meant getting Martin to let go of the girl and taking him to the ground to either handcuff him or hold him in place until backup arrived.

Even after Martin released the girl and he and Mastrianni continued struggling on the ground a few feet away, Mastrianni said he was still thinking about the girl’s safety.

“I knew there were other officers coming, and I didn’t want her to be walking into the middle of the street with cars coming at a high rate of speed to come back me up,” he said.

Unknown to Mastrianni at the time, a “Live PD” producer ran up and grabbed the girl during the struggle, which lasted more than a minute and a half. Some onlookers watched the scuffle unfold while others filmed it with their cellphones.

“It felt like forever,” Mastrianni said. “Really, it’s a fight for your life ... so every second seems like hours at that moment.”

‘You need to talk it out’

More officers arrived and handcuffed Martin, who, officials said, tried eating marijuana that he had in his possession.

With scrapes on his hands and arms, Mastrianni found the little girl and picked her up.

“She just laid in my arms,” he said. “I sat her down in my vehicle and kind of did an initial check, just talking to her. She wasn’t really talking back, but she’d wave back.”

Mastrianni, who has become a fan favorite on the show, said he watched the TV segment a couple of days later, to see what the viewers saw.

“It’s hard for anybody, but when you relive a situation like that, a lot of emotions do come back,” he said.

While viewers around the country talked about the harrowing incident, Mastrianni said he, too, talked about it with people.

“You need to talk it out; you can’t just hold it in,” he said of coping after such a traumatic event. “I talk a lot with my family, a lot of officers I’m close with. It’s not just for the first couple of weeks that you continue to talk about it.”

Mastrianni and Sgt. Kevin Lawrence visited the “Live PD” studio in New York City for last weekend’s broadcasts, during which host Dan Abrams called the July 8 segment “the most dramatic, if not most disturbing” incident of the show’s more than 50 episodes.

Mastrianni, whom Twitter followers have dubbed “Fastrianni” because of his speed while chasing suspects, said the feedback and support from people around the country has been humbling.

“I would do it exactly the same (again),” he said. “At the end of the day, I did everything I possibly could that I knew I trained for to keep everybody safe in that situation.”

This story was originally published July 19, 2017 at 7:26 PM with the headline "‘A fight for your life’: Richland deputy recalls chase, struggle captured on ‘Live PD’."