The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
DUNKERTON, Iowa (AP) -- A West Union, Iowa man is facing charges after leading police on a more than nine-hour chase on foot through cornfields, and in two stolen pickup trucks.
Police said Ronald Dean, 27, sped off about 8:50 a.m. Saturday when a Bremer County deputy tried to stop him for speeding near Readlyn in north Iowa. They said Dean sped south into Black Hawk County and lost control of his truck, then fled on foot into a cornfield.
Authorities later learned the first pickup had been stolen from its owner in Albert Lea, Minn.
Deputies from both counties and Iowa State Patrol troopers formed a search perimeter, sent in a search dog and sent up a state patrol airplane to look for Dean. They called off the initial search around 11:30 a.m. after sightings by farmers in a number of other fields.
“Farmers kept spotting him, and he’d have run into another field by the time we’d get there,” said Black Hawk County sheriff’s Sgt. Rick Abben.
A deputy finally spotted Dean around 3 p.m. driving another pickup truck near the county line. The truck was stolen from a nearby farm building, authorities said.
The deputy pursued Dean for another two miles before it went into a ditch, and Dean fled into another cornfield, disappearing for another two and a half hours.
Officers finally apprehended him after a farmer saw Dean running along a creek bed in a field.
He is in the Black Hawk County Jail on a $29,575 bond and has been charged with burglary and theft, eluding officers and trespassing. Police said they don’t know why Dean fled from them.