Construction worker carjacked in Troy but escapes by jumping out the moving van
A construction worker sitting in his van at a Troy worksite was carjacked by a suspect wanted in a burglary at an Edwardsville Walgreens early Wednesday but he was able to escape by jumping out of the vehicle, police said.
The construction worker was initially brought to Anderson Hospital in Maryville, but was later taken to St. Louis University Hospital for treatment of his injuries, according to Troy Police Chief Brad Parsons.
Parsons didn’t have a medical report available on the victim, whose name was not released.
The 2:30 a.m. smash ’n grab at the Edwardsville Walgreens store on Vandalia at Main Street led to a police pursuit by multiple police departments in Illinois and Missouri and two suspects in handcuffs at different police departments.
The names of the two suspects were not released because charges are pending.
The first suspect was arrested in Maryville shortly after the Walgreens burglary.
Maryville Deputy Chief of Police Tony Manley said the suspects’ vehicle was spotted in Maryville at Illinois 159 and Illinois 162 at about 2:45 a.m.
Maryville police stopped the vehicle with two suspects in it and the driver was arrested. While the 30-year-old driver was being arrested, the passenger hopped into the driver’s seat and fled the scene, police said.
He crashed his vehicle in a roundabout on Illinois 162 and then ran away. He was not caught.
When construction workers arrived on Wednesday morning at a worksite where they are building a duplex on Glidden Boulevard in Troy, they discovered the suspect hiding inside, Parsons said.
That’s when the suspect jumped into a van that belonged to a construction worker and fled with the worker still inside, Parsons said. When the suspect, who had been driving at high rates of speed through various venues, slowed a little, the construction worker jumped from the vehicle and was injured.
After the construction worker escaped, a pursuit ended in St. Louis with the arrest of one man.
Parsons said the driver put a lot of lives in danger.
“He drove the wrong way on the interstate and into construction zones,” Parsons said.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said officers arrested a suspect at Delmar Boulevard and Whittier Street, but the department could not confirm that he was the suspect from the Edwardsville Walgreens burglary.
Neither Edwardsville nor Troy police departments could confirm that the man arrested in St. Louis is the suspect in their cases. Both said it is an open investigation.
Charges pending
Edwardsville Police Chief Jay Keeven said Edwardsville officers will present their case to the Madison County State’s Attorney’s office Thursday afternoon and they are seeking charges against one man for sure and possibly a second man as well.
Keeven said the Edwardsville Police Department was notified by an alarm company about the burglary at the Walgreens store at 2:30 a.m.
“We received a call from an alarm company and by the time we got there, we could see a window was broken and we could see pretty clearly that some cigarettes had been taken,” Keeven said.
“We put out an alert and processed the scene. Maryville made contact with the suspect vehicle,” Keeven said.
This story was originally published October 21, 2020 at 6:26 PM.
