A man and woman were arrested twice within a short period Sunday, first for allegedly stealing a car and then for taking off in a Utah Highway Patrol vehicle where they had been placed in handcuffs pending transportation to a jail.
A UHP news release says the pair — a 28-year-old West Valley City man and a 32-year-old Kearns woman — were traveling east on Interstate 80 in a stolen car when the vehicle went off the road about 9:30 a.m. and rolled several times.
When a trooper arrived about 10 minutes later at the accident site, about 20 miles east of Wendover, the two were loading personal belongings into the truck of motorists who had stopped to assist them, according to the news release. The release says the car had been reported stolen so the trooper arrested the two, cuffed their hands behind their backs and placed them in his vehicle.
While the trooper stepped away from his Dodge Durango to retrieve the items from the truck, the woman managed to drive the vehicle away, the release says. The motorists who had stopped to help loaned their truck to the trooper, who caught up with his vehicle several miles away at milepost 24 on I-80, where the two had abandoned it and fled south into the desert on foot.
The escapees were taken into custody after a ground and air search, the release says.
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