ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Caught on his own camera, police say a St. Petersburg man is now facing charges after racing his motorcycle, evading police and then posting video of the incident on social media.
Javan Gomes, 24, was arrested Friday and charged with fleeing and eluding, racing on the highway, and threatening a police officer after the incident that took place in and around downtown St. Petersburg in late January.
St. Pete police detectives say Gomes was riding a Surron electric motorbike recklessly, driving on one wheel through red lights, cutting off cars, traveling on the sidewalk and failing to stop when officers tried pulling him over.
“Just doing very unsafe, dangerous things that could either harm himself or somebody else,” St. Petersburg Police Sgt. Michael Schade said.
Schade says due to city policy, officers didn’t chase Gomes and instead investigated the incident in the following weeks.
“He was making comments to the effect of ‘you can't catch me, you can't do anything about it.' Those types of comments while he was driving in circles around the car,” Schade added.
According to an affidavit obtained by 10 Tampa Bay, detectives say they talked with people around the neighborhood and found a video of the incident posted to a YouTube channel. The video titled, "Cops tried to take down Surron” was recorded using a helmet camera.
In the now-deleted video, the man who police say is Gomes and another biker are seen wheelie-ing through downtown. The biker at one point tells the other,” We’re doing illegal s*** so I don’t want you to get chased cause of us.”
“It just goes to the brazenness of the people that are doing this activity right now and we are seeing it more and more, not just on electric motorcycles, but motorcycles and cars, with street takeovers and things like that,” Schade said.
“It definitely has consequences that are much worse than what they think they're doing at the time,” he added.