On December 10, 2025 at approximately 0109 hours deputies from the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office responded to Gartner Truck and Trailers at 13777 Highway 52 SE, Chatfield, Minnesota regarding a suspicious situation later change to a theft call. Call notes indicated that two individuals were at the address attempting to break in, and that a male and a female had run from the scene when an employee arrived on scene and confronted them. The suspects were seen running south of a specified address. Deputy Drown responded to the scene and was advised that the female suspect had been detained by Chatfield Police after running from the scene.
Deputy Drown searched the lower level of a field for the male suspect, who was described as wearing camouflage clothing. Corporal Swayze spoke with the identified female, who stated that she and Joe were going to the Post Office to ship some eBay packages. Joe runs and eBay store and has over 1000 sales. Joe stopped here and told her to stay in the car. From where they were parked she could not see Joe once he got out of the vehicle. Joe came back to the vehicle and left several times. She never got out of the car until they got stuck leaving. (witnesses and camera surveillance confirmed she was never seen getting out of the car) Joe yelled to get out of the car as he got out.
Joe ran away and so did she because she was scared and did not know what was going on. Corporal Swayze learned that the victim's son had seen some stolen items in the suspect vehicle, including a CB radio and microphone, Milwaukee Sawzall, Milwaukee battery, and Craftsman socket and ratchet case/set. While retrieving the female's purse from the vehicle per her request, Corporal Swayzee saw in plain view the Craftsman socket and ratchet set, CB radio, microphone and numerous other items including eBay packages.
Deputy Sedarski spoke with complainant, who stated the following: the guy parked his Jeep in the lot and went rummaging around the vehicles parked here. He was awoken by his wife. She said their son was on his way and that there was somebody at the shed. She said to call 911 so I did. I put on his clothes and got in the car. He lives right next door. He called his son and came down the driveway and didn't see the suspects but his son said he almost ran them over and they were running south. His son turned into his driveway and they started following the suspects who were running south in the field next to Hwy. 52. The male crossed the highway and he told the suspect to stop and the male said something back to him that he could not hear, but the male did not stop.
The female came up to his car, as she must have had enough. She stated "look at your camera, I never got out of the of the car." By that time the male was at the 2 ••-CR-••-•••• Filed in District Court State of Minnesota 12/11/2025 driveway of 13940 Hwy. 52 about half way up and he turned south and he lost sight of him because of the trees. His son told him that he had been behind the Jeep when it was parked in the lot and it took off into the ditch and tried to get on to the road but got stuck, and that is when the male and female fled.
