Tallas Damon Walker a/k/a Tallas Demon Walker appeals his convictions for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and misdemeanor obstruction of an officer.
On November 14, 1994, an investigator for the Douglas County District Attorney’s office saw appellant’s vehicle parked by the roadside. The investigator, Lt. Cosper, turned around to follоw appellant, but appellant’s vehicle was gone. Cosper saw another officer, Lt. Streetman, traveling in the same direction as appellant’s car and radioed him to get the tag number. Streetman was in charge of inmate labor details at the sheriff’s office; his pickup truck had no blue light or siren but did have a sheriff’s star on each door and lettering showing it to be a “Sheriff’s Corrections” vehicle. Appellant was driving too fast for Streetman to get the tag number, but Street-man caught up with appellant’s car when it stopped at an intersection behind other cars. Streetman got the tag number, and appellant sped away and disappeared around a curve. When Streetman caught up with the car, it was parked by the side of the road.
Streetman did nothing to cause appellant to stop his vehicle. Appellant exited his vehicle, but Streetman told him to get baсk in, and he did so. When Cosper arrived, appellant and his companion, Larry McCowan, got out of the car and ran into the woods. Streetman tackled McCowan. Another officer testified that appellant was captured without incident. Meanwhile, Cosper went to the abandoned vehicle and saw on the front seat a set of drug scales, whiсh he seized. He also saw a bag on the passenger side on the floorboard, and in it he could clearly see what he thought to be drugs. The cocaine in the bag tested as weighing 110.8 grams with 84 percent purity. A narcotics officer recorded an interview in which appellant admitted the cocaine was his. At a pre-sentence hearing appеllant admitted under oath that he and McCowan bought the cocaine at Perry Homes in Atlanta with the intent to sell it.
Appellant enumerates 11 errors involving the denial of his motion to suppress, the hearsay nature of the state’s evidence as to the purity of the cocaine, the lack of evidence of “physical resistance” to support thе conviction for obstruction, an improper jury charge, and the trial court’s denial of his motion to correct the spelling of his *510 name on the indictment from “Demon.” Held:
1. In two enumerations appellant complains of the denial of his motion to suppress, on grounds that the evidence was seized when officers stopped and searched defendant’s automobile without an articulable suspicion of unlawful activity.
Appellant’s entire arguments are based on his contention that the law enforcement officers stopped and searched appellant’s vehicle without an articulable suspicion of unlawful activity. See
State v. Holton,
The evidence shows without material dispute that the officers did not stop appellant’s vehiclе and that appellant abandoned the vehicle before officers saw contraband in plain view. Whether the officers had an articulable suspicion authorizing them tо stop appellant does not rise to issue, for they did not direct him to stop. It is well established that police do not require an articulable suspicion merely to apрroach a voluntarily stopped vehicle. See
Jordan v. State,
Moreover, appellant was not “seized” when he first got back in the car at Streetman’s command.
California v. Hodari D.,
Further, appellant
abandoned
his vehicle and the drugs in it. Therefore, no search of the vehicle was unlawful even if drugs had not been in plain view.
Burgeson v. State,
Police pursuit does not of itself render abandonment involuntary.
*511
Williams,
supra at 548. Appellant voluntarily stopped his vehicle, abandoned it and its contents, and fled at the apрroach of police officers. The evidence in this case was not the fruit of a “seizure,” legal or illegal, and it is therefore not inadmissible.
Anderson,
supra at 677. We note that aрpellant’s flight was a circumstance sufficient to give an articulable suspicion of unlawful activity, but even if they had no such articulable suspicion, the officers were under no lеgal impediment in examining the abandoned car and its contents.
Guess v. State,
2. It is not true that the state’s expert witness based her testimony as to the amount and purity of the cocaine on hearsay. The expert, а crime lab employee, performed the gas chromatography/ mass spectrometry test herself and determined the two bags of cocaine tested had a purity of 84 percent and 85 percent, respectively. Her testimony was not rendered hearsay by the fact that a technician performed a routine function of “shooting” the cocaine into the machine to obtain results on a graph according to a preset computer program, which the witness then studied before arriving at her scientific сonclusions. That the witness formed her conclusions based on raw data obtained by the technician does not render her conclusion hearsay. See
Randall Memorial Mortuary v. O’Quinn,
The trial court did not err in denying appеllant’s directed verdict motion on these grounds. We note that appellant did not object to the testimony as hearsay at trial and cannot raise the issue of hearsay (right tо confrontation) here.
Thornton v. State,
3. The trial court did not err in refusing to charge on possession of cocaine as a lesser included offense of possession with intent to distribute, sincе the evidence shows that either appellant possessed the cocaine in an amount sufficient to constitute possession with intent
*512
to distribute, or he did nothing. See
Reed v. State,
4. Appellant was properly convicted of obstruction of an officer for his acts of flight, as a misdemeаnor. Flight is sufficient in certain cases to constitute misdemeanor obstruction of an officer.
Anderson v. State,
5. Assuming that appellant has shown competent evidence that his name is “Damon” and not “Demon,” we would hold that the trial court erred on the side of incaution in refusing to correct appellant’s name on the indictment from “Demon” to “Damon.” Where it would cost nothing to correct a name that is obviously inherently prejudicial, it is better to correct the name. However, as the evidence against appellant is overwhelming, we do not think any error in this regard affected the verdict.
Hamilton v. State,
The convictions are affirmed on condition that the trial court strike the sentence for felony obstruction and enter a sentence for misdemeanor obstruction.
Judgment affirmed on condition.