A Faribault man is charged with striking two marked police squad cars with his vehicle during an August 31 pursuit through Faribault, at one point accelerating into a squad car while an officer sat inside it, according to a criminal complaint.
Mohamed Hussein Lohos, 35, faces seven charges: two felony counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, one count of fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle, two felony counts of first-degree damage to property for the squad cars, gross misdemeanor third-degree driving while impaired with one aggravating factor and a misdemeanor count of failing to stop after a collision. The complaint was filed September 2 in Rice County District Court.
According to the complaint, the pursuit began about 6:06 p.m. on August 31, when an off-duty officer reported a red vehicle driving recklessly, stopping in the middle of the road and driving into oncoming traffic. Faribault police officers found the vehicle on 9th Avenue SW and clocked it at 60 mph in a 30 mph zone. The complaint says the vehicle struck a curb, crossed a grassy area and drove through an apartment complex parking lot where children were outside, then failed to stop for emergency lights and sirens and turned onto 12th Street SW and Autumn Drive.
READ MORE → Rice County coverage
One officer placed his fully marked squad car in the vehicle’s path to force it to stop and the vehicle struck the squad car with the officer inside, the complaint says. The pursuit continued and officers saw the vehicle’s front passenger tire go flat before they lost sight of it.
A second officer later found the vehicle parked on Spring Road SW. According to the complaint, Lohos got out and ran, then ran back toward the vehicle, ignored the fully uniformed officer’s commands to get on the ground and jumped into the driver’s seat. The officer tried to pull him out and observed him making incoherent sounds with an erratic demeanor, which the officer wrote led him to believe Lohos was under the influence of an intoxicating substance. Lohos put the vehicle in drive and took off. Officers later located the vehicle on Spring Road and the second officer pulled his marked squad car, emergency lights and siren activated, in front of it to block it. The complaint says Lohos rapidly accelerated forward and crashed into the squad car while the officer was inside.
Officers extracted Lohos from the vehicle and took him to a hospital. The complaint does not say whether anyone was injured. A search of the vehicle found several miniature Fireball alcohol bottles, ten of them appearing full and one empty. Officers obtained a search warrant for Lohos’s blood and while being informed of it he stated, “smoking gas,” “drinking,” and “yep I soon be out drink. I was drink,” according to the complaint. His blood was drawn at 7:15 p.m. and the results are pending.
After the pursuit, a woman flagged down an officer and said the fleeing vehicle had struck a parked car at an apartment complex, the complaint says. The parked car’s owner reported damage to the rear bumper and the complex manager’s surveillance video showed the vehicle going up on the grass, striking the parked car and leaving through the parking lot. Both squad cars sustained front-end damage; on one, the push bumper was pushed into the vehicle’s frame.
The complaint says Lohos has a prior DWI conviction, which is the aggravating factor in the third-degree DWI charge.
Each second-degree assault count carries a maximum sentence of 7 years in prison and a $14,000 fine, with a minimum of 366 days, according to the complaint.
