ENOCH — A man who fled from police following an attempted traffic stop early Monday morning was located and arrested at a convenience store several hours later.
Anthony Saavedra, 49, was booked into Iron County Jail shortly after 9:30 a.m. on suspicion of multiple offenses, including failure to stop at the command of police, giving false information to police, causing an accident with property damage, drug possession, having an open container of alcohol in a vehicle and possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person.
Iron County Sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Humphries said the incident began shortly after midnight when a deputy attempted to pull over a white SUV on Old Highway 91 near Summit for a brake light violation. Although the driver drove away, no pursuit was initiated, Humphries said.
Then, less than a half-hour later, at approximately 12:33 p.m., the same vehicle crashed into the garage door of a house on Half Mile Road in Enoch.
“No deputies were actively pursuing him at that point,” Humphries noted. “He was at a T-intersection, couldn’t make the turn and hit the house.”
When officers arrived at the scene of the crash, the suspect had already abandoned the vehicle and taken off on foot, which prompted authorities to later put out a communitywide alert via an automated phone notification system.
“They did a reverse 911, looking for the person that crashed the car,” Humphries said, noting that the suspect was eventually located at a convenience store a few miles away and picked up by officers around 7 a.m.
“He was at Maverik asking people for rides,” Humphries added.
A short time later, just before 8 a.m., another emergency notification went out, saying that the suspect had been located and that there were no other suspects at large.
This report is based on preliminary statements from law enforcement officials and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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