HIGH-SPEED HIGHWAY HAVOC: Career Criminal Crashes Camry, Sprints Into I-95 Traffic, and Punches Providence Detective!

Subhead: Nelson Pires—whose rap sheet stretches a decade and includes the tragic 2024 shooting death of his 7-year-old daughter—sparked a multi-city manhunt after bailing out of a wrecked getaway car.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A routine midday commute turned into an action-movie nightmare on Monday, October 26, when a wanted career offender triggered a multi-department police chase, plowed his sedan down an embankment, and literally ran into live interstate traffic before slugging a city detective in the face.

Police identified the wild-eyed suspect as Nelson Pires, 29, a man already notorious across the Ocean State for a decade-long trail of domestic violence arrests and his connection to the heartbreaking 2024 drive-by shooting that claimed the life of his 7-year-old daughter, Ny’Eil.

The Crash and Dash

The chaos erupted just after lunchtime when Warwick police tried to pull over Pires’s 2019 Toyota Camry for reckless driving. Refusing to yield, Pires floored it northbound on I-95. Even after Warwick officers called off the high-speed pursuit for public safety, Pires kept his foot on the gas.

Barrelling off the Point Street exit at breakneck speed around 12:45 p.m., Pires lost control, blew across both lanes of Point Street, and launched the Camry down an embankment straight into the Coro Building parking lot.

Fists Fly on the Freeway

With the Camry’s front end crushed, Pires didn’t surrender—he bolted. Witnesses and police say he tore through a nearby parking garage before sprinting directly onto the northbound lanes of I-95 on foot, dodging oncoming cars as Providence and Warwick officers closed in.

During the frantic foot chase along the highway, a Providence police detective moved in to grab him—only for Pires to swing wildly, landing a punch squarely on the detective’s face. Fortunately, the detective shook off the blow without needing medical treatment.

Seconds later, a Warwick officer teamed up with Providence cops to tackle and cuff Pires on the asphalt. Pires walked away from the takedown with a minor cut on his forehead, earning a quick pit stop at Rhode Island Hospital before heading straight to booking.

A Rap Sheet a Mile Long

Authorities revealed Pires wasn’t just running from a traffic ticket. At the time of the crash, he was riding with a female passenger in blatant violation of an active no-contact order, and he was already wanted on a bench warrant out of Lincoln.

Now, he’s staring down a laundry list of fresh charges across two jurisdictions:

• Providence: Simple assault on a detective, violating a no-contact order, resisting arrest, obstruction, and disorderly conduct.

• Warwick: Reckless driving and eluding police.

For Rhode Islanders following the courts, Pires’s name carries grim familiarity. In September 2024, he was slapped with felony child-endangerment charges after prosecutors said he chased down a rival car following an argument with his two young kids in the backseat—a confrontation that ended in gunfire and fatally struck his daughter. At the time of that tragedy, he was already out on bail across three separate domestic-violence cases.

This time around, police made sure he didn’t get far.