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Two Detroit-area teens criss-crossed the state this past weekend, first placed in a Sault Ste. Marie foster home and ending in a Huron County crime spree.
Emergency responders were dispatched around 10:45 a.m to a single vehicle injury crash at the M-53 and Buschlen Road intersection traffic light. The caller also relayed that the vehicle’s occupants took off running on foot from the scene. While enroute, a Bad Axe City Police Officer found the car’s occupants, two boys, running and stopped them. He was told by the two that they were ok, and further learned they had stolen the crashed vehicle earlier from a parking lot at McLaren Thumb Hospital in Colfax Township. The two boys, ages 15 and 16, were also in possession of two stolen Co2 BB pistols and accessories.
Taken back to the hospital by Central Huron Ambulance and escorted by the police officer, the two boys were checked out at McLaren Thumb. Returning to the hospital, it was learned that the boys had dumped another stolen vehicle, an earlier vehicle from the Sault Ste. Marie area, in the hospital’s back parking lot.
Upon release from the hospital, investigation found that the two teenagers had been taken from the Detroit area and placed in a Sault Ste. Marie foster home within the past few weeks. Though they arrived separately and on different days, the two decided to leave together, stealing a 2018 Hyundai Elantra around 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 27, and heading south. Despite being able to hotwire the vehicle, the teenagers were not able to navigate it, having no phone to assist, thus ending up lost and in Bad Axe around 6am on Sunday, July 28.
While in Bad Axe, they visited the Meijer store, stealing the two Co2 BB pistols and accessories. When they abandoned the Hyundai in the hospital parking lot, they left it with shot out windows and continued on to the next stolen vehicle, a 2019 Kia Soul, breaking a window and hotwiring this vehicle as well. As they headed north on M-53, back towards Bad Axe from Colfax Township, the driver accelerated to attempt to make the red light, but was distracted by the broken glass on the floor and lost control.
The car rolled several times, impacting a power pole, but both boys were able to escape the vehicle and attempted to flee, an attempt ultimately thwarted by the Bad Axe Police Officer who had found them.
The juveniles were eventually turned over to foster home representatives and returned to Sault Ste. Marie. A warrant request has been forwarded to the Huron County Prosecutor’s Office seeking charges such as felony vehicle theft, larceny, malicious destruction of property and leaving the scene of an accident.
Vehicle theft charges are also likely from Chippewa County Authorities regarding the stolen vehicle from their area.
The Bad Axe Fire Department assisted at the crash scene.