Sometimes the worst thing a person can do is drive away. For a 44-year-old Milwaukee man named Dewayne Stokes, that choice turned a routine traffic stop into a multi-agency pursuit, a crash landing in a Wisconsin field, and a new stack of serious criminal charges to go along with the ones he was already facing.
It started on the morning of May 9, just after 9 a.m., when a Wisconsin State Patrol trooper pulled over a vehicle on Interstate 41 northbound near USH 151 in Fond du Lac County. What should have been a straightforward stop quickly got complicated. A check on the driver revealed a felony warrant out of Kenosha County for failure to appear in court on a stolen vehicle case. On top of that, a caution indicator was flagged for the driver, prompting the trooper to call for backup.
Deputies from the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office responded. As the additional units arrived on scene, Stokes apparently decided backup was his cue to leave, and he drove off from the traffic stop entirely. It is worth pointing out that this man was already out on a $5,000 signature bond from Kenosha County for a stolen vehicle. So the decision to run was, to put it diplomatically, not his finest moment…