A 27-year-old man from Lynnwood was arrested early Wednesday morning for vehicular assault and eluding a police vehicle after he purposely backed into an Edmonds police patrol car and fled following an attempted traffic stop at Olympic View Drive and Wharf Street. A passenger from Brier was also arrested during the incident.

According to police, an Edmonds patrol officer had attempted to stop the vehicle around 4 a.m. Wednesday because it had some front-end damage and the officer thought it might have been in a recent collision. The vehicle license was also expired.

The driver fled and crashed the vehicle a couple of blocks away. When the officer stopped about 30 feet behind the crashed vehicle, the suspect put the car in reverse and deliberately backed it into the patrol car, police said. The collision shoved the front push bars into the grill of the police vehicle, but the officer was not injured.

The vehicle then fled at high rate of speed. Another Edmonds officer spotted the vehicle and briefly followed it, but terminated the chase due to the speeds being reached by the pursued vehicle.