The high-speed chase, with speeds nearing 100 mph, covered at least 25 miles, with the van weaving in and out of freeway traffic.
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Eidsness said police suspect that the men “are part of a larger theft ring that is targeting high-end stores”.
“They all came in at once and overwhelmed the store clerk, and she did the right thing”, Edina Police Lt. Brian Tholen said. There were no injuries at the store. WCCO-TV (http://cbsloc.al/1Cd66U9 ) says the suspects took designer handbags.
“Heard that on the radio”, Kaylin Eidsness, senior communications coordinator for Edina police, wrote in an email to the Woodbury Bulletin, “but we don’t know if they were stolen items yet”.
In that incident, the suspects drove a minivan through the front door of the store just after 4 a.m. The driver stayed inside the vehicle while eight other people wearing masks and gloves stole 50 items worth $120,000, police said at the time.
Police pursued the vehicle from West 76th Street to Penn Avenue to eastbound Interstate 494.
The eight men who were arrested are all from Illinois and are in their 20s and 30s, according to a statement from the city of Edina.
No one was hurt in the theft or auto chase.
With the aid of one of its helicopters, the Minnesota State Patrol, along with Bloomington and Edina police, engaged in a pursuit from I-494 in Edina to Highway 52 to I-94 where law enforcement stopped the suspects’ vehicle on an interchange ramp.
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Derrick Crowder, 22; William Percy Curry, 23; Clyde Edward Dobbs, 22; Thomas Dyshy Gaston Jr., 22; Darion Savon Hood, 21; Shawn Devon Mondie, 21; Danny Ray Robinson, 39; and Leon White, 29, were all charged with a single count of theft.
