Dashcam shows FHP trooper ram speeding truck into innocent motorist at 90 mph

Newly released dash cam footage from a Florida Highway Patrol cruiser tells the story, finally, of an innocent motorist’s death last February: The Florida Turnpike at rush hour. A fleeing suspect racing southbound in a stolen truck. And Trooper Bernard Major reaching speeds up to 94 miles an hour before ramming the suspect’s truck from behind.

The video, released to the Miami Herald, shows in raw, unedited detail the trooper’s speed and technique in the fatal crash on Feb. 26, 2026. Additional footage obtained by the Herald shows the deadly collision from overhead and from the angle of another police cruiser, shedding new light on a case that highlights the danger to the public of high-speed chases.

As the chasing cops weave around commuters and a school bus, dash cam video shows Trooper Major pulling up behind the truck and ramming it in the far-right breakdown lane. The truck careens directly into a sedan whose driver had seen the chase and pulled over. Speed markings on the video show 90 miles an hour when the trooper makes contact. His own patrol car spins around 180 degrees, coming to rest facing oncoming traffic.

Inside the crumpled Nissan Altima, 74-year-old Bonnie Bouffard, a Davie resident who was only four exits from home, was still alive, but not for long. Almost all her ribs were broken, her spine was fractured, her head and neck were injured.

“Oh, that’s gonna be bad,” a deputy involved in the chase said out loud, as he witnessed the accident with his body camera rolling. “Oh, f—.”

The Florida Highway Patrol and Broward Sheriff’s Office told the Herald they are still reviewing the day’s events — in which a drug-addicted woman’s alleged theft of a work truck mounted with a tracker led to an accident scene with about four dozen fire-rescue and police officers, police K-9s, ladder trucks, a shut-down Turnpike, an overhead helicopter and one dead motorist who was just trying to get out of the way.

“It’s a her?”

Hours of body and dash camera footage reviewed by the Miami Herald reveal a pursuit that went terribly wrong.

When police cars caught up to the stolen 2022 Ford F-250 pickup truck on the Florida Turnpike, officers leapt out, grabbed handguns and assault rifles, and screamed at the person in the back seat as the K-9 barked.

“Come out now, mother f—–! Come out now! I’m gonna send the f—— dog if you don’t come out!”

They’d sped, sirens screaming, through rush hour traffic on a Thursday, acting on a call that someone who’d been accused of stealing a work truck had committed battery on a law enforcement officer and was trying to escape.

When the suspect emerged from the truck, in the southbound lanes about a mile south of the Sunrise Boulevard exit, officers were shocked to see it was a small, thin, unarmed woman in a ponytail.

Laiken Randolph appeared dazed, and possibly on drugs, officers remarked. She later admitted to ingesting fentanyl, an FHP report says.

Driving the truck erratically in Coconut Creek earlier that day, Randolph is accused of hitting two police vehicles and driving in the direction of officers on foot — constituting felony “battery on a law enforcement officer” allegations — as she evaded patrol cars that had her partly boxed in. Her actions sent two officers to the hospital and broke one patrol car’s axle, records in the case say. Then, she made her way onto the Turnpike.

“It’s a her?” one officer asked after her arrest.

“It was a woman driver. A woman. That’s who was driving,” another said.

“So she was driving the car the whole time?” a male deputy asked. “She was the one driving the car? That’s crazy.”

Randolph, 35, is an admitted drug addict from Pennsylvania who was visiting Fort Lauderdale. Though she had a dog grooming business at one time, she told a YouTuber that she regrettably can’t stop returning to the streets for drugs. She told police she’d just been released from the hospital. She remains in the Broward County jail on no bond, pending her trial.

The Broward County State Attorney’s Office is prosecuting Randolph for second-degree murder for Bouffard’s death, and 43 other counts, including DUI-related crimes, grand theft auto and aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer. Her attorney, Maria Della Guardia with the Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel, declined comment for this report. Randolph has pleaded not guilty.

The day could have ended differently. The Herald previously reported that Randolph was accused of stealing a different truck earlier that same day; Fort Lauderdale police had her in their squad car and gave her a ride to her hotel.

“I think she’s gone”

Body cam footage from the chase shows that before the trooper ran into the truck, a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy, Gerald Wengert, tried to spin the driver out by making contact with the rear of the vehicle.

Called a PIT — or Precision Immobilization Technique — the maneuver is done by pulling alongside the rear of a suspect’s vehicle and turning the steering wheel into it, causing the driver to lose control.

In a court record in the case, Wengert is said to have disengaged “due to oncoming traffic safety concerns.” With his body camera running, Wengert told colleagues that he wished he’d been able to complete the PIT maneuver. He said he was “bombarded” by FHP troopers.

“Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” Trooper Major said inside his patrol car as he took over in the lead chase position, edging out Wengert and speeding past a school bus to hit the truck.

“Alright,” Wengert said on the radio on a BSO channel. “Well, FHP’s cutting me off, so I’m gonna let them PIT him.”

Soon after, a rush of deputies swarmed the crashed pickup truck. Yards away, five Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies pulled on plastic gloves and took turns giving CPR to Bouffard, trying to save her life.

A breast cancer survivor, Bouffard’s butterfly tattoo could be seen just below her left shoulder.

“Sweetheart, can you hear us?” a BSO deputy asked when he ran up on her mangled vehicle. Her purse and a pack of Marlboro Lights sat on the floorboard of her car.

Looking on was Trooper Major, body camera footage shows, frowning in the sun as the deputies followed guidance from a portable defibrillator device.

“Push harder. Push harder,” the robotic voice repeated.

“I think she’s gone,” a deputy on the highway said. Bouffard, a lover of casino slots, peanut butter-flavored whiskey shots and her cats, was soon declared dead.

Major, 33, a Dillard High School graduate and a trooper since 2021, could not be reached for comment. Bill Smith, the president of the Florida Highway Patrol chapter of Florida’s Police Benevolent Association, said he could not comment on an open investigation.

Trooper Major could be seen after the crash on other officers’ body cam footage reviewed by the Miami Herald. An officer at the scene asked whether he was “good.”

“I think so,” he responded. “We’ll see what happens.”

Deadly force

The crash, coming on the heels of other fatal police chases in Florida this year, reignites a long-running debate about the safety of the PIT maneuver and other intentional car-to-car contact used to stop fleeing vehicles. The Florida Highway Patrol, under Dave Kerner, head of the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, uses the PIT maneuver regularly.

Making contact vehicle-to-vehicle with a fleeing suspect is a controversial police tactic — one many departments put tight rules around. Doing so at high speed and in traffic is particularly dangerous. Experts who reviewed the footage for the Miami Herald said they believe it is tantamount to deadly force — like shooting someone — and should be reserved only for violent fleeing criminals.

It wasn’t warranted in this case, they said.

“When you hit a vehicle at 90 miles an hour, it’s going to result in a fatality,” said Roy Taylor, a police procedure expert in North Carolina. “… You wait and follow the truck until it gets into an off-ramp or somewhere where it has to slow down.”

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Thomas Gleason, a retired Florida police captain and a PursuitSAFETY board member, reviewed the dash camera footage and said he believes the risk was too great to warrant a chase and PIT in this case. Gleason knows the danger personally: His son, who worked in law enforcement, was killed in a police chase decades ago.

Gleason said pursuits are typically limited to two or three police cars to reduce road chaos, but there appeared to be at least five or six in this chase on a crowded road. He also said when an officer performs a PIT maneuver at speeds above 35 mph, the likelihood of serious bodily injury to the officer or to the public greatly increases.

While some agencies have restricted pursuits over safety concerns, others such as Arkansas, Florida and Georgia state police have leaned into high-speed chases and PITs also in the name of safety, Gleason said.

“But are you really doing public safety if you’re Pitting a person at 100 mph?” he said.

Many agencies limit PIT maneuvers more tightly than FHP. The Miami Police Department’s policy, for example, prohibits pursuits for anyone who isn’t a violent felony offender. It says that officers “may not ram, bump, or collide with a fleeing vehicle nor pull alongside the vehicle to force it off the roadway unless deadly force is necessary.”

FHP’s policy — since a Dec. 22, 2023, rewrite — allows troopers to chase any suspect who flees a traffic stop. Troopers aren’t limited to a maximum speed, and can “drive on the wrong side of the roadway, in the wrong direction, or on the shoulder.”

Still, they’re advised to look at the road conditions, and weigh the circumstances.

The policy warns: “Members should remember that the greater the speed, the greater the likelihood of injury or death.”