“The crash was like nothing I’ve heard before,” said Tawnya Mahoney as she stood in shock Wednesday on the corner of West 38th Avenue and Jay Street in Wheat Ridge. “This was my dream, my dream car.”
Her sport utility vehicle was a casualty of a series of events that put four Jefferson County schools on lockdown and led to the arrest of an “armed and dangerous” escapee from the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Justin K. Kautz, 23, was taken into custody about 4 p.m. Wednesday by the Wheat Ridge SWAT team after an extended chase and standoff.
After the crash in Wheat Ridge, the suspect fled to an apartment complex at 6150 W. 39th Ave. and was found by SWAT team members as they entered and cleared apartments on the second floor, said Lisa Stigall, spokeswoman for the Wheat Ridge Police Department.
Stigall said Kautz, who apparently was injured in a car crash earlier in the afternoon, did not resist.
Paramedics treated Kautz at the scene. He was taken to the Jefferson County jail.
Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety, said Kautz walked away in August from a halfway house where he was placed to transition from prison to the community.
Clem said Kautz had been sentenced in Jefferson County in July 2005 on multiple convictions, including aggravated motor-vehicle theft, menacing and vehicular eluding.
Wednesday’s incident began about 11:30 a.m., Stigall said, when Arvada police spotted Kautz driving a stolen Toyota Sequoia near Arvada City Hall.
She said marked and unmarked squad cars unsuccessfully tried to stop the escapee and his female companion.
During the pursuit, an Arvada patrol car hit a curb, causing the cruiser’s airbags to inflate.
Stigall said the Sequoia continued to flee, slamming into a red pickup at Kendall Street and West 38th Avenue, resulting in injuries to the female driver of the pickup. She was taken to a hospital.
The Sequoia later veered off 38th through a parking lot, where it crashed into Mahoney’s unoccupied SUV, “squishing” it between the Sequoia and a tree, Stigall said.
“We heard Kautz’s passenger screaming, . . . and it looked as though one of her legs was pretty mangled,” Mahoney said. “It was horrible.”
Although Kautz’s companion was trapped in the car, he fled on foot and ran to the apartment complex, where he later surrendered, police said.
