COCOA, Fla. – An arrest has been made in the hit-and-run crash that injured a Cocoa police traffic officer who collided with a vehicle when he was riding on his motorcycle on Sunday, officials said.
Norman Scott, 25, was arrested Tuesday in connection with the hit-and-run, police said.
Officials said Scott was transferred Tuesday evening to jail, and he will likely be charged with leaving the scene of a crash and driving on a suspended license.
"When this originally occurred, it was an accident, but when this suspect made a conscious decision to flee the scene when the officer was laying there on the ground, motionless, that really was something terrible," Cocoa Police Chief Michael Cantaloupe said. "It turned it from a simple accident to a terrible crime."
Police said Cocoa police Officer Rickford Leitch was assisting in escorting the Traveling Vietnam War Memorial Wall to Melbourne with members of several other police agencies when he crashed.
The driver initially stopped, but as officers were attending to Leitch, he took off, officials said.
A countywide alert was issued for the driver of a blue Jeep Grand Cherokee, who was not part of the escort and who fled the scene moments after the collision left the officer briefly unconscious, officials said. The Jeep was later recovered.
Lt. Donna Seyferth, with the Rockledge Police Department, told News 6 her investigators started getting leads soon after the incident on Sunday.
"We knew that he was local to Cocoa and Merritt Island. That we were familiar with," she said. "We received some leads on that, and it was just a matter of confirming, yes, that was the person, and, yes, he was behind the wheel."
Seyferth said they got that confirmation on Tuesday, and her detectives zeroed in on an apartment on Lemon Street in Cocoa.
She said Scott was arrested without incident.
"When you have an officer -- anything happening to an officer -- it definitely makes you stop and think," Cantaloupe said. "Any day, something like that could happen to any of us."
News 6 found out Scott has an extensive criminal history, including drug charges, battery and robbery.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, he was on supervised release for drug charges in 2015 when he was arrested Tuesday.
On Tuesday night, he was booked into the Brevard County Jail, and he is expected to make a first appearance before a judge on Wednesday afternoon.
