A Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper rolled his vehicle Friday morning near Cheyenne while grappling the truck wheel of a homicide suspect who was fleeing Colorado, the local sheriff says.
The trooper is OK, Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak added in a video he posted to Facebook after the incident Friday morning.
At 5:20 a.m., Laramie County Sheriff’s Office deputies received a be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) notice for a homicide suspect out of Thornton, Colorado, said Kozak in the video.
A deputy spotted the truck in question as it crossed into Wyoming, Kozak said, adding that the Wyoming Highway Patrol also converged in the area.
The sheriff did not immediately return a Cowboy State Daily request for additional information.
A later Wyoming Highway Patrol statement says the incident happened on Interstate 80.
The trooper on scene “has one of those grapples” that fires a net at the suspect’s wheel to halt a pursuit before it happens, Kozak described in the video.
“The idea was to actually get behind the vehicle, initiate the grappler, initiate the traffic stop, and that’s what they did,” said Kozak. “But things don’t always go as planned in police work.”
Both vehicles entered the median, and the patrol vehicle rolled, WHP reported.
Kozak said the trooper's vehicle caught the edge of the road.
Thankfully, said Kozak, the trooper was wearing his seat belt.
“Hats off to the trooper in this situation,” said Kozak, who said the trooper didn’t want to risk having a high speed pursuit in the community as people headed to work.
The trooper sustained "minor injuries" and was briefly hospitalized, WHP clarified in its later press release.
Probable Cause
With the suspect’s truck halted, law enforcement personnel called for the suspect to exit the truck. They couldn’t see into the truck because the windows were “so dark” with tint, said Kozak.
The personnel did not approach the vehicle for safety reasons, but rather called for the driver to exit, he added.
The sheriff said they deployed a 40-millimeter projectile at the windshield to burst the windows so they could see into the truck, then they took the suspect into custody with no one hurt.
Thornton police didn’t have a warrant drafted for the suspect as of Kozak’s video release, the sheriff said, adding that the homicide investigation was new and fluid.
Though originally an inconvenience, the window tint posed an opportunity for deputies, as they sought probable cause to hold the suspect without an arrest warrant ready from Colorado.
“So we’ve taken the suspect to our jail — get this — on a window tint violation,” said Kozak.
The sheriff said he won’t release the suspect’s name at this point, and will let the Thornton Police Department do that since it’s their case.
The Thornton Police Department told Cowboy State Daily it would return a call for more information.
This story has been updated with details from a 1 p.m. statement by the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
