Police take four people into custody in Columbia

Four individuals were arrested by several law-enforcement agencies in connection to a possible theft that originated in Missouri and ended near the Columbia Lakes Apartments late Wednesday morning.

St. Louis County police alerted Columbia police at 9:54 a.m. that two men and two women were fleeing Missouri and driving into Illinois over the Jefferson Barracks Bridge, said Captain Jerald D. Paul with the Columbia Police Department.

Columbia officers went to the northern part of town to look for the vehicle but couldn’t find it at first. Then they noticed it was traveling south back to town from Dupo on Route 3.

“We wanted to catch them in that water tower, wooded area before they got in the subdivision where the people live,” Paul said.

The four individuals had driven down a dead-end street, got out of the car and ran, he said. Police soon set up a perimeter around them.

Five to 10 minutes later, a St. Louis County police officer caught one person a half mile away behind a Shell gas station, Paul said. The other three went into a densely-wooded area to evade the police dogs but were apprehended about 45 minutes later.

The name of the individuals apprehended have not been released, because they have not been charged in Illinois.

Sgt. Ryan Schellman, a spokesman for the St. Louis County Police Department, said that they will be charged in Missouri with tampering and misdemeanor stealing. The four suspects allegedly stole a pocket knife from a K-Mart, and they had allegedly stolen the car from Jefferson County earlier.

The Columbia, Dupo, Cahokia and Waterloo police departments, as well as the Monroe County and St. Clair County sheriff departments and Illinois State Police, which lent a plane to the incident, assisted in the search.

This story was originally published March 23, 2016 at 12:07 PM with the headline "Police take four people into custody in Columbia."