A 14-year-old girl in a stolen car led a state trooper on a high-speed chase on Interstate 70 on Tuesday morning after driving off without paying for gas in Lincoln County.
She was arrested 100 miles later after driving over spikes placed in the path of her speeding Pontiac by Aurora police at I-70 and Tower Road.
She was not named, and the Colorado State Patrol is releasing few details about the case because she is a juvenile, Trooper Heather Cobler said.
“She just looked like a normal teenager, 17 or 18, dressed nice, wearing a hoodie,” said Paula Figurelli, the manager at the station, D-J Petroleum in Arriba.
“Apparently she had taken her mother’s car.”
The car and the teen had been reported missing in Westminster about midnight, 9News reported.
The clerk on duty saw the girl fidgeting with the pump just before 7 a.m. and went out to help, Figurelli said. The teen said she didn’t have a credit card but presumably would come in the store and pay cash after she pumped.
Instead, after she filled her tank with $35.05 worth of fuel, she jumped in the green Grand Am and screeched out of the parking lot and raced back onto the interstate.
About 20 miles away, on the eastern edge of Limon, she passed a trooper, who pursued her, sometimes at more than 100 mph, for almost 70 miles before ending the chase at Byers as the girl began to approach morning traffic on the edge of the metro area, according to a State Patrol statement.
A second trooper joined the chase as the car neared the metro area.
“The suspect eluded officers while committing various lane and speed violations,” the agency stated.
Aurora police set up “stop sticks” at Tower Road, which an uninvolved vehicle also ran over. Neither the 14-year-old nor the other driver was injured or crashed. The girl was arrested after pulling over on the shoulder of I-70 near Peña Boulevard.
“Once the suspect pulled over, she refused to get out of the car and would not let officers in. As a result, her window had to be broken,” Cobler told 9News.
The teen covered the 100 miles from the gas station in about an hour, the State Patrol noted in its statement.
She faces numerous potential charges, including theft of the car and the fuel, vehicular eluding and speeding, according to the State Patrol.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
