Police have a 23 year old man in custody after they say he stole a police vehicle and led officers on a short manhunt until a soldier in the area apprehended him Wednesday night.
Douglas Walker Ellison allegedly slipped out of police custody about 4:45pm while an officer was getting him shoes from his house, according to Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon.
Ellison Managed to unbuckle his seat belt and get his cuffed hands in front of him, then took off in a Utah County Sheriff’s Office pickup truck on a dirt road between Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs, Cannon said.
Officers from Eagle Mountain and the sheriff’s office were attempting to arrest Ellison who had initially been cooperative, for parole violations at the time.
As police gave chase, Ellison drove toward oncoming traffic at an estimated 90 MPH in a 55 MPH zone, Cannon said. Officers followed the truck, which had firearms and other police equipment in it, with a tracking device inside the vehicle. During the chase, Ellison found a spare handcuff key in the vehicle and unlocked the cuffs.
The vehicle eventually hit spike strips laid down by officers and veered off the road. Ellison jumped from the vehicle, attempted to take a bystander’s vehicle, then took off on foot heading toward Staff Sgt. Brian Udy, a member of the Utah National Guard.
“I started kind of doing a dance with him in the middle of the road,” Udy said. “He continued toward me. I then veered with him toward the right, tackling him into a Bluffdale city police vehicle.”
Udy said Ellison continued to fight as another officer joined the fray, pinning and handcuffing him about 5pm.
Udy, a member of the 65th Fires Brigade and full-time employee at Camp Williams, downplayed his role, saying he “went into military mode.”
“I think any military personnel what would have been here would have automatically, with their training, done the exact same thing,” he said.
Ellision’s criminal history includes multiple felony charges for theft, burlgary, and criminal mischief, some of which were either amended to lesser counts or dismissed, as well as a charge of assaulting a prisoner that was amended to a misdemeanor, according to Utah state court records.
He was found guilty between 2009 and 2011 of misemeanor charges for criminal mischief, giving false personal information, failure to stop at the command of officers, theft by recieving stolen property and child abuse.