Crash kills two, injures three in Wisconsin police chase

By Brendan O'Brien

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Two people were killed and three injured early on Wednesday when the vehicle they were traveling in crashed while they were being chased by a sheriff's deputy in southern Wisconsin, police said.

The driver and front-seat passenger were killed and three people riding in the back were injured and taken to hospitals, the Watertown Police Department said in a statement.

A sheriff's deputy pulled over the vehicle at about 2 a.m. in Ixonia, about 40 miles west of Milwaukee, but the driver fled at a high rate of speed about 15 minutes into the stop, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

The deputy pursued the vehicle for about 4 miles until the driver lost control at a slight bend in the road and crashed into a tree in a residential area of Watertown, authorities said.

Police have not released the identity of the driver or passengers. Fox television news in Milwaukee reported that one of the dead and one of the injured were students at Watertown High School.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Peter Cooney)