Police chase ends with two in custody | Crime

What started out as a case of shoplifting turned into a police chase ending with two people in custody.

Poplar Bluff Police Chief Danny Whiteley said officers were dispatched to Walmart around 10:16 a.m. Tuesday regarding a shoplifter who was running away from the store’s loss prevention.

The suspect reportedly left in a Ford pickup truck just as officers arrived. 

Police chased the suspect’s truck to the 3000-block of Warrior Lane where they arrested the driver, 60-year-old Michael Jackson Reece of Poplar Bluff, without incident.

The suspected shoplifter, 51-year-old Gregory Dewayne Davis of Charleston, ran into a neighboring apartment and locked the door behind him.  Chief Whiteley said Davis then refused to let the 40-year-old female resident open the door to police.

As officers searched the area, Whiteley said the woman began banging on the apartment’s front door to alert police.

Davis eventually opened the door and was arrested on charges of misdemeanor stealing, burglary-first degree, felonious restraint and resisting arrest.

Reece was charged with numerous traffic violations, resisting arrest and a warrant for felony larceny out of New Madrid County.

Chief Whiteley said members of the Butler County Sheriff’s Office and the Missouri State Highway Patrol assisted in the search and arrest of Davis.