A 36-year-old man was arrested Sunday after leading law enforcement officials on a chase that included the carjacking of a security guard at the Nisqually Red Wind Casino and stretched from Yelm to Lacey.
Jerimy James Trudeau, of Centralia, was initially stopped by a Yelm Police Department officer at about 5 p.m. after failing to activate his turn signal within the required distance. A subsequent search of the vehicle showed it was registered to a woman who had a protection order against Trudeau.
According to police reports, Trudeau, who was in the driver’s seat while the woman was a passenger, initially provided a false name to the officer, who returned to his patrol vehicle to compare photographs and make certain it was Jerimy Trudeau in the vehicle.
When the officer asked Trudeau to step out of the vehicle, he “reached down as if he was going to unbuckle his safety belt and then shifted the vehicle into drive and sped off,” according to police reports.
Trudeau’s vehicle nearly struck the two officers as he fled southbound on Yelm Avenue East and turned right on Yelm Avenue West. The chase continued at speeds of 80 to 90 miles per hour as the officers backed off to ensure the safety of other motorists. They caught up to the vehicle as it reached the Nisqually Reservation. Trudeau turned left into the Red Wind Casino parking garage where he briefly got away from the officers, who were blocked by traffic.
Pedestrians pointed the officers in the direction of Trudeau as they traveled up the parking garage, eventually finding that his vehicle had crashed into a parked car and that the woman who had been inside was now out of the car and crying.
She claimed she had begged to be let out of the vehicle but that Trudeau wouldn’t let her.
As the Yelm officers searched for Trudeau, they were notified that he had carjacked a security guard and fled in the stolen vehicle toward Lacey.
It was initially reported that he stole the vehicle at gunpoint, but later he admitted to using a lighter that he implied was a firearm.
Thurston County Sheriff’s Office deputies picked up the pursuit, which ended when a deputy used a PIT maneuver to crash Trudeau’s vehicle at an apartment complex off of Marvin Road Southwest in Lacey.
Trudeau will face charges of unlawful imprisonment, theft of a motor vehicle, eluding police, hit and run and violation of a no-contact order.
He was booked into the Thurston County Jail.
It was the second major police chase in a week after another man was arrested Sunday, Nov. 24, after ramming two Pierce County Sheriff’s Office vehicles in Roy before leading the pursuit into Yelm where he collided head-on with a Yelm police officer’s patrol vehicle.
Michael Wallace Schwabland, 38, of Snohomish, was arrested after fleeing on foot.
