ST. GEORGE — Three people, including a man from Richfield, are in jail following an arrest in Mesquite, Nevada that was set in motion when an alert patrol officer stopped a vehicle that was reported as stolen and during a search found the third occupant hiding in the back seat.
On Monday afternoon, an officer in Mesquite noticed a vehicle that was previously reported as stolen traveling west on Pioneer Boulevard, according to a statement released by the Mesquite Police Department Thursday.
The officer pulled around and got behind the vehicle as it continued west and then pulled into a parking lot “in an attempt to evade” police.
A couple was standing outside of the car when the officer stopped but quickly got back into the vehicle as soon as they saw the officer approaching, who was able to stop them from driving off.
Additional officers arrived and both suspects were detained, including the driver, later identified as 44-year-old Lonnie Carl Rogers of Richfield, and the passenger, 43-year-old Amber Dawn Wisenbaker of Mountain View, Wyoming.
While investigating the stolen vehicle report, officers conducted a search of the car, which is when they found a third occupant in the back seat who was identified as 25-year-old Ashley Nichole Cady, also from Mountain View.
The vehicle was stolen out of Richfield and from the report it was a sports utility vehicle that was stolen, Mesquite Police Sgt. Wyatt Oliver told St. George News.
The Wyoming warrant for Wisenbaker’s arrest was issued by the parole board following an arrest in Evanston that took place in July of last year – a drug case that is still pending with the Uinta County District Court, court records state.
In 2017, she was sent to the Wyoming Women’s Center, a correctional facility in Lusk, where she was sentenced to serve two to six years in prison for delivery of methamphetamine. She ended up spending 46 months there until her release shortly before her arrest in July 2020, according to records obtained from the Wyoming Department of Corrections.
The suspect was on parole in Wyoming at the time of the Mesquite arrest.
The driver, Rogers, has a number of open misdemeanor theft cases filed in Sevier County between October of last year through Jan. 21, and three of the cases have a court appearance scheduled to take place in 6th District Court in Richfield on April 12.
Following Monday’s traffic stop in Mesquite, all three suspects were arrested and transported to the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where each faces one felony count of possession of a stolen vehicle.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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