INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn. — A relatively routine encounter led to a wild scene at the Inver Grove Heights Police Department early Sunday, and the arrest of a suspect who might not have been thinking clearly.
Inver Grove Heights P.D. detailed the incident in a Facebook post late Sunday. It began earlier that day when a pair of officers who were conducting business checks came upon a vehicle parked on the 7800 block of Cahill Road. Two people inside were slumped over - the passenger was soon arrested for multiple outstanding warrants while the driver was arrested for drug-related DWI.
Police say that driver was in the process of being booked and released when she was allowed to call a sober friend to come and pick her up at the Inver Grove Heights PD. Things got interesting when the man she called showed up and handed an officer his ID.
"Now this is where it gets hard to believe, but it’s all true. This good friend of hers, showed up to our police department, with three warrants, in a stolen vehicle, and did not have the correct plates on the car," reads the Facebook post. "In fact, the plates on the vehicle belonged to a Toyota minivan… but he was driving a Chevy pickup."
After confirming the man was wanted in multiple counties, the officer went to arrest the man... who slammed on the gas and sped out of the parking lot, injuring an officer. The speeding, stolen pickup was pursued by multiple departments and eventually stopped in South St. Paul by an officer using a PIT maneuver.
So - to recap - the friend who showed up to give an arrested woman a ride home is now behind bars in Dakota County facing a host of new charges ranging from assault on an officer to fleeing police in a motor vehicle. That's on top of the three warrants already out for his arrest.
What played out Sunday is obviously unusual, but apparently arrests stemming from incidents in the Inver Grove P.D. parking lot are not. The department says three people have been taken into custody involving situations in their parking lot over the past few months.
