Here’s a great example of what not to do if you’re trying to pull off a successful car theft. But don’t worry. No police K9 dogs—or human officers—were harmed in this incident.
According to the Will County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were on “routine patrol” in Plainfield, Illinois, on a Friday night. At 11:30 p.m., they spotted a suspicious vehicle, ran its plates, and realized it had been reported stolen in Joliet, Illinois.
Naturally, the deputies flipped on their lights and signaled the driver to pull over. The driver decided to make a run for it instead. That is to say, they ran headlong into another police cruiser.
The Sheriff’s Office reported, “The deputy and his K9 partner inside the patrol vehicle were unharmed.”
The stolen vehicle didn’t fare much better. “The impact disabled the fleeing vehicle.” With the stolen car not going anywhere, five suspects piled out and made a break for it. The quick-thinking deputy who they had plowed into didn’t waste any time. “The deputy whose vehicle had been struck successfully apprehended the driver after a short foot pursuit.”
The aftermath of Illinois car thieves hitting a K9 unit
In total, police immediately apprehended three of the five suspects. Two folks from inside the car managed to evade police and made for the woods nearby. But the Will County Sheriff’s Office wasn’t messing around. It created a task force and assembled the Tri-County Auto Theft Task Force. The Sheriff’s Office then used a drone to locate the two suspects hiding in the woods.
The driver is facing a long list of charges: possession of a stolen motor vehicle, resisting arrest, criminal damage to government property, no valid driver’s license, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, leaving the scene of an accident, failure to yield to an emergency vehicle, and operating a vehicle without insurance. Because the driver is 15 years old, authorities aren’t releasing their identity. The rest of the passengers were also juveniles and have been “released to the custody of their parents without charges at this time.”
