A Kansas City man recently was sentenced to spend two decades in state prison for an incident that took place in an area county more than two years ago.
According to a post on Lafayette County Prosecuting Attorney Kristen Ellis Hilbrenner’s Facebook page, on June 18, Judge Dennis Rolf sentenced 39-year-old Andre Turner to a total of 20 years in the Missouri Department of Corrections for Assault of a Law-Enforcement Officer in the Second Degree, Assault in the Second Degree, Armed Criminal Action and Resisting a Lawful Stop and Leaving the Scene of a Motor Vehicle Accident.
Turner had been found guilty of those charges by a Lafayette County jury on May 1.
This case began on February 5, 2016, when a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper attempted to pull over a vehicle in Odessa. The vehicle failed to yield and fled the scene. During the pursuit, the trooper attempted to position his vehicle on the driver’s side of the eluding vehicle in an attempt to identify the driver. The suspect’s vehicle forced the trooper towards the left side of the roadway and struck the patrol vehicle on the passenger’s side with its driver’s side. Both vehicles separated and struck again for a second time. At that point, the trooper lost control of his vehicle, and the car overturned down an embankment and came to rest on its top. The trooper and his passenger were able to exit the vehicle prior to emergency personnel arriving.
The suspect’s vehicle continued onto I-70, other law-enforcement officers followed and the pursuit continued until they lost sight of the suspect’s vehicle in Jackson County. The owner of the vehicle, Turner’s daughter, reported the vehicle stolen, but during the investigation, officers were able to determine that she made a false report. The vehicle was not stolen but was being driven by her father, Andre Turner, at the time of the crash. As he was fleeing from law enforcement, Turner called his daughter and his sister and told them to report that the vehicle was stolen.