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captainsblogA California man who tried to get out of paying a taxi fare was arrested early today in the Town of Evans following an extensive search involving several police agencies, K-9 units and a sheriff's helicopter, State Police reported.
Troopers say the case began at 8:25 a.m. when they received a call from Timothy Ward, a driver for A-Cab, a taxi company with offices in Dunkirk.
Ward had picked up a fare in Dunkirk who asked to be taken to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and who said he would pay with a credit card, said State Police Capt. Michael Nigrelli of the Thruway detail.
Ward drove eastbound on the Thruway and called his office to run the credit card number, Nigrelli said.
When an employee told him it wasn't being accepted, Ward pulled over at the Angola service area and told the fare that he couldn't drive him any farther until he proved he could pay in cash.
The fare called a relative and asked her for money, but she didn't help him, Nigrelli said.
Ward then called 911 to report a possible attempt to avoid payment and a trooper came over to the cab to talk to them. The fare said he would go inside the service area to get cash.
"Then he took off," Nigrelli said.
Troopers called in K-9 units, the Erie County Sheriff's Office helicopter and the Town of Evans police to help in the search and to set up a perimeter around the service area.
"We had him hemmed in pretty good," the state police captain said, adding that police knew who they were looking for.
Just after 11 a.m., the sheriff's copter directed police on the ground to an abandoned garage on nearby Gowans Road in Evans.
The suspect, Kevin G. Holt, 48, of Alpine, Calif., was found hiding in the rafters of the garage.
He was charged with theft of services and obstructing governmental administration, both misdemeanors.
Holt, a former area resident who has an estranged wife living in Dunkirk, is wanted on three outstanding warrants from California and Idaho for burglary and domestic assault charges, according to State Police.
"It's bizarre. It's a labor-intensive effort, but you can't let someone like that elude your capture," Nigrelli said.
This follows on our multijurisdictional capture of a felony breakdancer last month. Good thing nothing else bad is happening under our sheriff's jurisdiction, oh, other than about a suicide a week among unconvicted prisoners at the downtown holding center, where he and our Six Sickma county executive are spending hundreds of thousands in legal fees to stop federal investigators from getting in to the jail.
Eureka! Take a cab from the airport and evade the fare! They'll escort you in undercover in no time!
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 01:38 am (UTC)Reminds me somehow of ...
there was five police officers and three police cars,
being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to
get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of
cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and
they took twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each
one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to
mention the aerial photography.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 02:35 pm (UTC)