Man with warrants arrested after brief attempt to evade police near Rigby
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RIGBY – A routine traffic stop near Rigby Saturday night turned into an arrest for a man with outstanding warrants.
Lt. Marvin Crain with Idaho State Police tells EastIdahoNews.com around 6:15 p.m., a man was spotted in the westbound lane of U.S. Highway 20 driving 80 mph in a 70 mph zone.
When EastIdahoNews.com reports on crashes along U.S. Highway 20 — one of the biggest complaints we get is that we refer to the highway as westbound or eastbound.
It’s true that in eastern Idaho, U.S. 20 does run north and south, but nationwide, the road is actually an east and westbound route. The red line in the map above shows the route the highway follows.
RELATED | North, south, east, west — which direction does U.S. Highway 20 really run?
Most of the federal and state agencies — including Idaho State Police and the Idaho Transportation Department — use the term “eastbound” and “westbound” when referring to U.S. 20 in news releases to media. For a while, we tried correcting every release to the direction that stretch of road is traveling where an accident happens, but that inevitably leads to more confusion and frequent errors if our terminology does not match that of traffic officials.
West = South, East = North. Get it? Please don’t correct us.
Although it was not a high speed chase, Crain says the man — he didn’t know his name — eluded police for a couple miles.
“He went a couple miles, turned through the median and came back in the eastbound lane, drove a couple miles and pulled over (near North Rigby exit 322),” Crain says.
Video sent to us by a passerby shows six law enforcement vehicles parked near the exit with their lights on. One of them is a Rigby Police vehicle. A Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office vehicle and a Madison County Sheriff’s Office vehicle is also present.
In the video, law enforcement officers can be seen searching a blue Chevrolet pickup.
Crain says the man was arrested on two misdemeanor warrants — one for possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia and the other for eluding.
Police took him into custody just before 7 p.m. He was booked in the Jefferson County Jail.
Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Jennifer Fullmer confirms that Rigby Police Department assisted in the arrest.