A crime spree lasting several weeks finally came to an end after a standoff on Wednesday morning at the corner of Lincoln and Mission in the vacant parking lot of the old Family Video store.
Sapulpa police arrested 24-year-old Dakota Deckard after an hour-long standoff when officers pulled over a vehicle being driven by Deckard’s father, Police Captain Mike Sole told Sapulpa Herald on Wednesday.
“We’d been looking for this guy for several days,” he said. “His father said he was in the bed of the truck.”
According to Sole, the vehicle Deckard’s father had been driving had a storage compartment in the back, where Deckard was hiding. He refused to comply with commands to exit the vehicle, even after police hit the space with pepper balls.
“We finally had to go in with our ballistic shields up and remove him from the storage compartment,” Sole said, adding that Deckard didn’t resist arrest at that point.
According to police, Deckard’s crime spree began on May 21st, when Sapulpa’s Taco Bueno was burglarized. Surveillance video showed a male suspect going inside, gaining access to the cash register, and removing $655 from the business.
Over a week later, on May 29th, police say that the same suspect attempted to enter a residence by removing a window air conditioning unit but was confronted by the homeowner and left the scene.
That same day, The Sapulpa Aquatic Center was burglarized. Police say surveillance video shows a suspect entering through an office window, breaking into the cash register, and taking $200. The damage done to the register forced the Aquatic Center to move to take cash only for a while.
Most recently, South Heights Baptist church was burglarized on June 6th, where video surveillance showed a suspect matching the descriptions of all the previous burglaries and matching the description of Dakota Deckard ransacking the church, taking $100 from the church’s offering plates, as well as removing a shotgun from the pastor’s office, according to Captain Sole. “The shotgun was some kind of family heirloom,” Sole said.
On June 7th, Deckard was finally found and arrested, bringing an end to his 3-week crime spree.
According to the Muscogee Creek Nation District Court website, Deckard has eleven pending cases, ranging from domestic assault to felony burglary. Captain Sole says that the U.S. Attorney General’s Office is picking up Deckard’s case due to the volume of crimes he’s committed.
Officer injured in collision
In a connected event, an officer was involved in a collision with another vehicle while responding to dispatch regarding the standoff happening in Sapulpa, according to Captain Sole.
The officer, whose name was not given, was on patrol on New Sapulpa Road north of 81st Street when the call went out over dispatch about the standoff with Deckard. The officer was headed southbound on New Sapulpa Road (State Highway 66) to assist in the standoff when another vehicle made what Sole says was an “illegal left turn” onto 81st Street, putting himself in the path of the oncoming police cruiser.
Sole said the cruiser struck the vehicle and the driver of that vehicle, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was ejected.
Police say the officer was sent to the hospital with a concussion and a broken foot, but is otherwise in good condition. They say that the driver of the other vehicle was alert and is reportedly in stable condition.
Police say another vehicle sitting at the stoplight at 81st street was struck by the police cruiser. The condition of that driver is not known.
