A Story County man who was wanted on drug-related charges was arrested near Rock Creek Lake in Jasper County with the help of a county supervisor. Supervisor Denny Stevenson was at his rental storage unit in Kellogg Monday morning when he saw something that looked suspicious.
“I notice this car sitting inside the carwash, two male subjects sitting in it, Polk County plates, just sitting in there. Of course that’s what peaked my interest,” Stevenson says. He went ahead and put ladders away in the storage shed and got the plate number off the vehicle and called the Sheriff’s office dispatch.
Stevenson is a retired Jasper County deputy, and his instincts about the vehicle proved correct. “The plates were stolen, basically then I just kept an eye on them until the deputy could get over there,” Stevenson says. The two men left the carwash and one was dropped off at a home in Kellogg, while Stevenson followed the other to Rock Creek Lake.
The deputy showed up and arrested 26-year-old James Gardner of Ames. Stevenson says this reinforces the idea that if you see something that doesn’t look right, call police and report it.
Stevenson says he heard from people a lot of times when he worked as a deputy who said they had seen something and had thought about calling it in, and it turned out later that something had happened. “This was just suspicious enough I felt like we needed to check it out, or have that plate number recorded in case something came up,” according to Stevenson.
Gardner is being held on charges of eluding, interference with official acts and driving on a suspended license. The identity of the other man is not known.
By Randy Van, KCOB, Newton
