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.
remims@sltrib.com
Twitter: @remims
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