A wrong-way high-speed chase spilled off Interstate 25 on Monday and onto the course at the Wheatland Golf Club before the driver took off on foot, leaving behind about 6,000 illegal fentanyl pills and a handgun.
The out-of-state driver was caught and arrested, as were three others in the maroon sedan. The Platte County Sheriff’s Office reported Tuesday that it stepped up to help the Wyoming Highway Patrol a little before 1 p.m. Monday, which requested assistance in stopping the car speeding along I-15.
While the sheriff’s office was responding to the scene, deputies were told the suspect vehicle took off from mile marker 73 on Interstate 25, the agency reports. The vehicle proceeded up South Wheatland Highway at a high rate of speed while also driving in the wrong lane against traffic.
Deputies attempted a roadblock to move the vehicle up Cozad Road in an attempt to keep the car out of city limits, according to the sheriff’s office press release. The suspect vehicle went around deputies onto the grass shoulder.
The Wheatland Police Department was called in to assist, and officers had tire deflation devices deployed at the Wheatland Cemetery.
The vehicle’s passenger side tires were deflated, but the car continued to drive around the country club neighborhood at a high rate of speed as officers from all agencies attempted to stop the car, the release says.
Wheatland police and sheriff’s vehicles both rammed the suspect’s car, which then proceeded onto the golf course grounds.
The vehicle lost control at one point, which allowed a Wheatland police vehicle to pin the car in, which is when the driver fled on foot while the other three passengers remained inside of the car, the release says.
But the driver didn’t get far, and was tracked down with the help of a Platte County Sheriff’s office K-9, while a search of the car yielded about 6,000 fentanyl pills and a handgun, the report says.
All four occupants of the car were arrested and booked into the Platte County Detention Center.
The driver, Alex Baxter, was charged with driving with a suspended license, fleeing/eluding from police and reckless driving.
The three occupants were Derek Lanctot, who was charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana, felony possession of fentanyl and being a felon in possession of a firearm; Benjamin Rodriguez, who was charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana and has warrants out of Colorado; and Erica Jones, who was charged with two felony counts of marijuana possession, due to previous drug charges.
The four are from Colorado, the Platte County Sheriff's Office confirmed to Cowboy State Daily.
Stopped On The First Hole
Jeannette Kaufman originally planned to take Monday off from her job as manager of the Wheatland Golf Club because her daughter was playing in a golf tournament in Douglas.
Mondays aren’t normally busy at the course, so she figured she could have someone else on staff hang out and watch over things.
“I feel bad because I missed my daughter’s tournament, but I’m so glad I didn’t go, because I wouldn’t have wanted one of my employees saddled with this,” Kaufman told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
Instead, she watched a true-crime drama unfold on the course’s first hole, which fortunately nobody was playing on when the chase ended there, Kaufman said.
Even so, it wasn’t enough to alter the game of a group of regulars.
“I have a group of men that play every day at 1:30 p.m. So, this happened around 1. But these guys showed up at 1:30 and kept on golfing,” she said. “They just went down to the women’s tee box to tee off from there.”
There was minor damage done to the course, but nothing that will affect the day-to-day operations of the club or anyone’s golf game, Kaufman said.
Seeing a car chase in Wheatland is definitely unusual, but Kaufman said she’s a Denver native, so this isn’t the craziest incident she’s ever seen.
“It still kind of shook me up a bit,” she said. “I thought, ‘What in the world?’ When the one gentleman started to run from police officers, they pulled out their taser and he went down. That was kind of funny.”
She was concerned there might be firearms involved during the chase, but she never felt unsafe, especially since the police were “on their asses.”
“I sometimes see deer out here on the course and that’s what I want to see,” she said. “A car flying down your midway, that’s kind of shocking."
Ellen Fike can be reached at ellen@cowboystatedaily.com.
