By BETH HUNDSDORFER
Capitol News Illinois
bhundsdorfer@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD — When Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Jonathan Pearce saw a white pickup spotted outside a motorcycle shop that had been burglarized earlier that night, he punched the gas and chased the fleeing truck, reaching race car speeds and screeching his tires through hairpin turns.
Sgt. James Hayes, his supervisor, asked whether he had enough gas.
“I got a full tank, baby,” Pearce said on a dispatcher’s recorded line.
Hayes OK’d the chase. As it turned out, he would need all that gas.
The chase tested the limits — not only Pearce’s driving abilities, his cruiser’s performance and Hayes’ supervisory skills in ensuring his officers act under policy, but the limits of newly appointed Sheriff Paula Crouch to enforce those policies.
Capitol News Illinois first reported on the pursuit in September, but the Sheriff’s Department released scant details. CNI filed a Freedom of Information Act request to review police reports, dispatch records, and dashcam video of the pursuit, but the request was denied. CNI then filed a lawsuit against Sangamon County to get access to the records. Afterward, the county relented.
The records showed a pursuit that clocked triple-digit speeds, winding through downtown streets, past city parks, neighborhoods lined with million-dollar homes, golf courses, on country roads, down a major interstate, over railroad crossings, across narrow bridges and even past two local police stations.
The pursuit that averaged 100 mph at times ended more than 100 miles from where it started with a man, later identified as suspect Kirtis Davenport, barely breathing on the side of a black-topped country road. Davenport, police said, fell from the bed of the speeding truck as it made a sharp turn. The driver kept going.
“When you are on a pursuit, your adrenaline is pumping. You are flying. The lights and sirens are going. You are multitasking — using the radio to send your location, update the dispatchers and supervisor, keeping an eye on the road, watching your subject,” Christopher Burbank, a former police chief who now serves as a consultant for the Center for Policing Equity, told Capitol News Illinois.
“And at speeds like that you are outrunning the sound of your siren. You will come upon drivers that can act erratically because they don’t hear your siren until you are right on top of them.”
The U.S. Justice Department called vehicular pursuits “the most dangerous of all ordinary police activities.” According to a study by the Police Executive Research Forum, 4,415 people died during a police pursuit from 2017 to 2021.
In 2023, the Illinois State Police annual report on police pursuits contained 1,023 reports of chases, up from 834 in 2022. The report found that the average pursuit lasted under five minutes with an average law enforcement speed of nearly 80 mph. The pursuits ended in 131 crashes.
What is notable about the Sangamon County pursuit is the duration, Burbank said. In fact, it is one of the longest he can recall. Unpredictable drivers, wildlife, unfamiliar roads, high speeds, and adrenaline compounded the danger, Burbank said.
Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office engaged in 11 pursuits in the last five years, not counting the 100-mile pursuit, according to records from the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standard Board. The agency requires police to submit a report for all pursuits.
Of the 11 previously submitted reports, the longest Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office pursuit was 20 miles at speeds of more than 105 mph. Pearce traveled five times that distance at speeds that topped 110 mph.
Police initiated many of the pursuits for property crimes, such as possession of a stolen vehicle or burglary, or traffic violations. Two pursuits were initiated for violent felonies — armed robbery and homicide. Four gave the reason for the pursuit as a felony with no further details.
In the Pearce pursuit, it all started with a burglary call.
Details of the chase
The call came in just before midnight Sept. 21 as an alarm at a local motorcycle dealership.
Hayes and Pearce responded and found the front door smashed. A witness reported seeing a new, white Dodge pickup truck pulling a box trailer.
Almost an hour later, a Dodge Ram pickup truck was spotted — without a trailer, but two dirt bikes in the bed. Pearson tried to stop him, but the driver fled.
The pursuit wound south, then west through Springfield, dropped south at Washington Park and through Leland Grove. Hayes, the sergeant who authorized the chase, by now had joined in and attempted to put up stop sticks — hollow spikes that flatten the tires of cars that drive over them — at South Grand and 11th streets but was unable to get them set up before the cars passed.
In Leland Grove, a city adjacent to Springfield, the pickup turned down a dead-end road, then turning around and heading straight for the squad car.
“He’s trying to ram me!” Pearce told the dispatcher.
About 5 minutes later, on the northern edge of Springfield, the pickup — followed by Pearce — turned south in the northbound lanes of Veteran’s Parkway, a major state highway, for two miles before getting into the southbound lane.
The pursuit left Springfield, to Riddle Hill, Berlin, New Berlin, Maxwell, Auburn, Divernon, Waverly. North of Loami, Pearce reported to dispatch that objects were being tossed onto the road at him. His car was hit by a flying wrench. The chase continued south on Interstate 55.
The written statement added ISP would not advise other agencies to terminate a pursuit acknowledging that they operate according to their own policies and procedures.
The pickup and the pursuing squad car traveled at 106 mph through a construction zone, just north of Litchfield.
At the Litchfield exit, the driver was able to avoid stop sticks. The truck traveled east into downtown Litchfield to Cherry Street where it turned and headed south out of town.
Hayes stopped chasing. He was miles away from Sangamon County and low on gas, he wrote in his report.
Pearce’s radio signal cut out, according to the dispatch recordings, but he continued to pursue, traveling south, skirting Staunton and Williamson.
“Piece of s— radio,” Pearce said.
The pursuit continued down darkened rural roads, flanked on either side by cornfields that would have obstructed cars entering intersections, then over a high railroad bridge that ends in T road. The truck made the sharp turn and so did Pearce, but on his bodycam video his headlights caught something on the gravel shoulder.
“Oh s—! Oh s—! I think someone just fell out of the truck. … Damn it!” Pearce said.
Pearce ended the chase to render aid. The bodycam video showed Pearce approaching the man, who was on the shoulder barely breathing. The truck kept going, and Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies continued to chase, but they lost sight of the fleeing truck and gave up.
After Pearce called for an ambulance, deputies who had joined the chase began to give first aid.
Later, they found a wallet with three unscratched Missouri lottery tickets, five milligrams of methamphetamine, and $122 in cash. The man had no identification, only a tattoo that said “Davenport” across his abdomen.
The chase took just over an hour — a route that would take two hours in normal traffic and following the speed limits.
The man on the road was airlifted to St. Louis University Hospital with life-threatening injuries. He had sustained severe head injuries. Police later identified him by his fingerprints as Kirtis Davenport, 43, of Kansas City. Davenport was on federal parole for theft. When he was arrested at a Kansas car wash for that case, court records stated he was carrying a loaded 9 mm handgun.
Police found the 2022 Dodge Ram truck reported stolen out of Kansas with stolen Missouri plates abandoned six miles south on a street in the Madison County town of Livingston. Inside, they found guns, including a stolen handgun, and ammunition. Two new dirt bikes were still in the truck bed.
They also found a cell phone under the passenger seat belonging to Davenport. The vehicle pursuit had ended, but the pursuit of the driver was just beginning.
Digital detective work
A search of Davenport’s phone turned up pictures of bikes from inside the dealership on Sept. 19 — three days before the burglary, according to a cellular data analysis report by Sangamon County Sheriff’s detectives.
The digital analysis of the phone also turned up Facebook messages with a Kansas man named Ryan O’Neal, a former motocross rider, known to local police to steal bikes and sell them to support his narcotics habit, the report said.
O’Neal and Davenport were suspected of a similar burglary in Olathe, Kansas six weeks earlier, according to a Sangamon County report documenting a conversation with Kansas police.
The digital trail showed O’Neal’s and Davenport’s phones stayed together from Kansas to central Illinois. Police pulled surveillance video at a New Berlin gas station. In that video, Davenport uses the bathroom and buys a hooded sweatshirt. They could also see another man with him putting gas in a white, Dodge Ram pickup, pulling an enclosed trailer.
The trail would later put them at the parking lot of a Springfield hotel for an hour after the heist. Employees would later say the trailer, with two flat tires, was picked up by another truck and hauled away.
Cell phone analysis showed their phones were together during the pursuit. After he fell out of the truck Davenport’s cell phone stayed with the truck until it was towed back to Sangamon County. O’Neal’s phone went south and stopped in Livingston, made calls for a time, then headed north, stopped, then continued further north to O’Hare Airport in Chicago, then later to Kansas City.
O’Neal had gotten away for the moment.
After four days in critical condition at the St. Louis hospital, Davenport died. His organs were donated, according to his family’s wishes.
Prosecutors issued a warrant for O’Neal on Oct. 17. He was still on the lam.
It was late November when federal marshals arrested O’Neal in Kansas. He was extradited to Sangamon County to answer the charges. Under the SAFE-T Act, an Illinois judge found that the charges did not meet the legal qualifications for O’Neal to be detained until trial. Over prosecutors’ objections, he was released.
O’Neal could not be reached for comment. His next court appearance is scheduled for April 21.
Aftermath of the pursuit
At the time of the pursuit, the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department was under scrutiny after the officer-involved fatal shooting of an unarmed Black woman in her kitchen after calling to report a prowler outside her home.
Deputy Sean Grayson was charged with murder, aggravated battery and official misconduct for the shooting of Sonya Massey on July 6.
Massey’s death brought a civil rights probe by the U.S. Justice Department. It also launched a wrongful death suit by Massey’s family that recently ended in a $10 million settlement.
There were widespread calls for reform, including from Gov. JB Pritzker, and for then-Sheriff Jack Campbell’s resignation. Campbell announced his retirement effective Aug. 31.
Three weeks later, Pearce and Hayes were involved in a high-speed, multi-jurisdictional pursuit of this Dodge Ram they suspected of being involved in a burglary, a violation typically considered a property crime.
Due to the inherent risks, each law enforcement agency adopts their own policies to set forth rules regarding police pursuits. The Illinois State Police, who have patrol units that work the interstates, did not participate in the pursuit, stating it did meet their policy requirements, a state police spokesperson said.
As a precaution, troopers were reminded over the radio that permission was not granted permission to get involved in the pursuit, a state police spokesperson said.
Sangamon County Sheriff Office’s pursuit policy is 16 pages and sets out how and when to pursue a fleeing vehicle, when it should end, and delegates responsibility for assessing risk between the deputy and his supervisor.
“Deputies and supervisors must objectively and continuously weigh the seriousness of the offense against the potential danger to innocent motorists and themselves when electing to continue a pursuit,” the policy states.
The policies, obtained by Capitol News Illinois, state that deputies should not pursue a vehicle solely for property crimes, and non-forceable felonies.
Such policies are intended to protect the officer and the public, Burbank said, and have been adopted by police departments and sheriff offices around the country.
“No one needs to die over stolen motorcycles,” he said.
But the ISP report on pursuits found that the top reasons for initiating police pursuits are overwhelmingly minor traffic violations, followed by suspected stolen vehicles.
Sangamon County’s pursuit policy also states that if a pursuit leaves the jurisdiction, the supervisor should decide whether to continue, based on the circumstances. The police chase traveled through at least seven different jurisdictions, including Springfield, Litchfield, Leland Grove, as well as Montgomery, Macoupin and Madison counties.
Ten days before the chase, Hayes, the supervisor who authorized the pursuit, had notified the sheriff’s office that he intended to retire, effect Oct. 2. Hayes submitted that notice just two weeks after former Sheriff Jack Campbell retired.
Crouch, who had been on the job for two days when the chase occurred, placed Pearce and Hayes on paid administrative leave until an internal investigation was completed.
Crouch recommended a two-day unpaid suspension for Hayes and Pearce.With the internal affairs investigation pending, Hayes pulled back his retirement. In December, he gave notice on Dec. 9 that he would begin his retirement two days later.
Hayes, whose annual salary in 2023 was $122,000, and Pearce, who received $55,000, filed a grievance with their police union challenging the discipline, Crouch said, stating that burglary is a forcible felony. Crouch confirmed that grievance is still pending. Tamara Cummings, General Counsel for the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
