Man leads authorities on 2nd chase in four months

By Peter Cox - Stillwater Gazette
Published: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 1:17 PM CDT
Some habits are tough to break.

A week and a half ago, Damien Allen Anderson was sentenced to five years probation, a 17-month stayed prison sentence and 135 days in jail (of which he's already served 98 days), for stealing a pizza delivery vehicle from a Newport gas station, drinking, getting high on meth and marijuana, speeding in excess of 100 mph eastward on Highway 36 without lights on and fleeing police.

No less than five days before that sentencing, Anderson was apparently at it again.

On March 17, the 31-year-old allegedly stole a vehicle from a Newport gas station, drove over to Wisconsin and lead police on a high-speed chase into Minnesota, eventually crashing his vehicle in West Lakeland Township, according to that criminal complaint.

In the case Anderson was just sentenced for, he was arrested after leading police on a chase through Stillwater on Dec. 7, according to the criminal complaint.

Anderson was spotted driving eastward on 36 near I-694. An off-duty DEA agent was nearby and turned on the lights on his unmarked squad and began chasing him.

The Stillwater Police Department was called to assist, and also joined the chase.

The man ran over a stop sign at Washington Avenue and Curve Crest Boulevard, and continued on. A Stillwater officer finally used his squad car to make man's vehicle spin out.

Anderson was then arrested. He had 6.2 grams of marijuana and 12 pills of Oxycontin in the vehicle, and admitted to drinking and smoking both methamphetamine and marijuana.

The vehicle turned out to have been stolen Saturday night. A pizza delivery driver had gone inside a gas station in Newport, and the suspect jumped into the vehicle, which had four pizzas in it, and took off.

When an officer came in and said he'd seen a phone in the vehicle, but didn't know whose it was, Anderson responded, "I suppose the guy I stole the car from gets to keep the phone."

When police went back to the scene of the crash, they found that during the chase, he'd hit a stop sign at Washington Avenue and Curve Crest Boulevard. The vehicle had sheared the stop sign off.

He was convicted of one count of theft of a motor vehicle.

He originally faced charges of DWI, theft of a motor vehicle and fleeing a police officer in a motor vehicle.