This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
This is the case of the guy who ran out of gas in northeastern Utah's Morgan County, accepted a lift from a sheriff's deputy — and ended up behind bars.
The Morgan County Sheriff's Office reports that the deputy was driving along Interstate 84 on Wednesday morning, saw a motorist in distress and offered him a ride into the town of Morgan to get a can of gasoline.
However, as he and the man, in his mid-30s, chatted on the way in, the deputy became suspicious.
"The man's story just wasn't adding up, so once they returned to the [man's] vehicle with the gas, the deputy did some additional investigating on his computer," Sgt. Corey Stark said on Friday. "It turned out the man had provided a false name to the deputy; the photo that popped up for the name he gave did not match."
Confronted about the deceit, the man admitted to providing a false identity and produced his real name, along with a revoked driver license — conditions that required, under state law, that any vehicle he was driving be impounded.
While doing an inventory of the car a small amount of marijuana was found, adding misdemeanor drug possession to suspicion of driving on a revoked license, failure to install an alcohol-interlock device and providing false information to a law officer to the counts under which he was booked into the neighboring Weber County Jail.
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