Wednesday morning rush hour in Lubbock is already a soul-crushing experience, but 38-year-old Jerry Marquez decided to spice things up by turning his morning commute into a live-action Grand Theft Auto mission. Around 9:00 a.m., the Lubbock Police Department’s “Crime Suppression Unit” tried to pull Marquez over in the 1900 block of Clovis Road. Evidently, the only thing suppressed was Marquez’s desire to cooperate, as he immediately stepped on the gas and chose chaos.
Because stopping a single vehicle in a completely flat city built on a literal grid is apparently a monumental task, LPD couldn’t do it alone. By 9:43 a.m., the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) had to join the parade. It took a grand total of three separate law enforcement agencies and an entire sixty-minute hour of taxpayer-funded driving to finally bring this West Texas thriller to an end.
The pursuit officially concluded around 10:00 a.m. on the scenic Idalou Highway near County Road 3000 when a DPS trooper finally made “contact” with Marquez’s vehicle, resulting in a crash. Marquez was safely arrested and hit with the ultimate Hub City starter pack: evading arrest, possession of a controlled substance, and a parole violation. As of Wednesday evening, he was chilling at the Lubbock County Detention Center on a $25,000 bond.
Isn’t it comforting to know that it only takes a multi-jurisdictional coalition, sixty full minutes, and a highway collision to successfully execute a standard traffic stop around here?
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