MOULTRIE, Ga — In a scene reminiscent of the Bill Murray comedy “Groundhog Day,” a driver fleeing from police on Thursday afternoon took a turn down a railroad track in an attempt to escape.

In the movie, Murray’s character faces no consequences from playing chicken with an oncoming train and wrecking the car. A Meigs man merely abandoned a pickup truck after getting it stuck on the train tracks.

Prior to that, however, there was nothing funny about the driver challenging oncoming vehicles by traveling into their lanes and forcing them off the roadway. One of those was a semi truck.

The chase, which ended with the arrest of Charles Fletcher Escoffier, started at about 4:48 p.m. in Norman Park when an officer spotted a 2001 Dodge Ram 1500 whose owner had been stopped earlier in the week for an expired tag violation.

Law enforcement also had information that there were illegal drugs in the truck, according to Norman Park police. After meeting the truck on Broad Street the officer turned around and saw it dart into a residential driveway.

When the officer turned into the driveway behind the truck and turned on the blue lights the driver drove through a ditch and onto Bryant Street. The driver got onto Railroad Street and ran several stop signs before taking R.L. Sears Road south, where he slammed on the brakes in an apparent attempt to make the patrol car crash into the back of the truck.

As he was driving “back and forth between lanes and off the shoulder of both sides of the road, it also appeared that he was throwing bags out the window,” police said. “He continued to drive back and forth on the road and began driving towards oncoming traffic, causing them to drive off the road to avoid crashing.”

After turning onto Highway 37 and heading west, the driver began intentionally “driving towards vehicles” in the east-bound lane, police said. “(And) it was apparent he was driving towards people with the intent to cause severe injury to them by either crashing into them or causing them to run off the road and crash,”

One of those vehicles was a semi loaded with fuel whose driver drove his rig into a ditch between trees to avoid a head-on collision.

Approaching Moultrie, the pickup made a left onto the railroad track, crossed a bridge and then got stuck after trying to drive off the tracks, where it was abandoned.

The Norman Park officer was joined by deputies from the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office in the hunt for the suspect, who was trying to get away on foot. Police located Escoffier and arrested him after someone in the area called 911 and gave his location.

Escoffier, 20, faces a number of charges related to the chase, including aggravated assault, fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer and reckless driving.

He also is charged in Colquitt County with entering auto and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon from an unrelated incident.  He is accused of stealing a Hi-Point semi-automatic pistol on Monday out of a truck in the 300 block of C.O. Kennedy Road, sheriff’s Sgt. Ronald Jordan said.