An 11-year-old Minnesota boy was arrested after allegedly stealing a cement mixer, taking it for a joy ride and leading police on a wild chase at speeds of up to 70 mph.
"It's certainly not your normal traffic stop, not your normal chase," Dodge County Sheriff Scott Rose told KTTC, a local NBC station.
The youth allegedly stole the mixer on Sunday from a contractor in Dodge Center, a small city about 25 miles outside of Rochester.
"I betcha he drove around town six or seven different times," Dodge Center resident Troy Flatness, who witnessed the chase, told KARE. "He was smiling, hooting and hollering... he was having a good time."
Flatness said the chase became something of a local event.
"Everybody was out with their cameras," he told the station. "It was like a parade and I had no idea what was going on."
Police were not amused.
"He just tried to take out my car," one officer told dispatchers, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "He rubbed the whole passenger side of my squad [car]."
The 75-minute police chase ended at a dead-end street, where the youth left the truck and tried to run, but was apprehended by officers, KARE reported.
No one was injured.
The suspect is currently awaiting charges in a juvenile detention center.
Worried residents in the community said the suspect's joy ride could have had a different and much more tragic ending.
“He (the driver) was raised in a farming environment. He can drive tractors. He can drive trucks. He knew what he was doing,” witness Jeff Beddow, who said the youth was in his 4-H club, told local CBS station WCCO. “He was not stopping for anything. If there would have been a car or pedestrian in the way, it would have been disastrous."
(h/t Digg)
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