Police in Waterloo arrested a teenager and are looking for another, in a string of overnight crimes that included a brief police chase and a crash. Captain Bruce Arends says Cedar Falls police notified Waterloo officers that somebody in a van had left a gas station about three this (Tuesday) morning without paying for gas.
The vehicle was registered to a Waterloo household, where the people awakened by police discovered their van had been stolen. Less than an hour later, the Waterloo officers were called to a report of some people vandalizing a vehicle. It turned out to be the stolen van they’d been looking for, and the captain says the two teenagers took off running and eluded officers, but he says they stole another van and when police spotted them, a chase ensued.
As police chased them, they lost control of the van, which plowed through a fence surrounding a warehouse. They ran into a semi tractor-trailer that was parked there in the parking lot. One teen suffered non-life-threatening injuries according to police, who took him to a local hospital. Radio Iowa does not routinely name minors involved in a case. Captain Arends says only that police were familiar with the two boys, one eighteen and the other fifteen years old. They’re still looking for the second suspect.