AMARILLO,TEXAS -- Two people are in custody in connection with the crime on Bernard Avenue Thursday afternoon.
Eric Michael Connors, 23, of Amarillo and 17-year-old Jordan Michael Anthony Hansbrough of Nevada were both booked on burglary and evading arrest charges. The arrests are a result of a burglary that occurred in the 1300 block of Bernard.
When officers arrived at the home they saw both of the suspects still in the home. They tried to arrest the men but they escaped out of a window in the home and ran.
Connors was stopped and immediately taken into custody in the yard. He was handcuffed and locked in the backseat of a patrol car.
Meanwhile, the other officer requested assistance and pursued the suspect that continued to run. The first officer ran to assist the other officer. That's when she heard a car door close and looked back to see that the front door of her patrol car was open and Connors was trying to drive away in the suburban they used in the burglary.
Officers later determined that he had slipped the handcuffs around in front of his body and forced open the locked, sliding the Plexiglas window in the partition between the front and back seats. He had made his way into the front seat and then out of the patrol car. He got to the suburban and tried to drive away. The officer ran back to the suspect's vehicle in time to reach through the window to try and put it in park. Connors continued to try and escape. He accelerated quickly, forcing the officer to abandon her effort to stop him in order to protect herself from being pinned between his vehicle and the patrol patrol car that was parked near the suburban.
The officer then joined the officer with Hansbrough, by then in custody in the 2900 block of N. Mirror.
Other officers found that Connors had driven the Suburban through a fence and into a storage building in the back yard at 3000 Walnut. He then fled on foot. A short time later police were able to apprehend the suspect. He had entered an attached storage area of that home and remained hidden there. He later came out and got into a vehicle driven by a person that was driving away from a home in that block. The driver of that vehicle was interviewed as a witness and released.
Connors faces preliminary charges of burglary, evading in a motor vehicle, and escape.
Hansbrough has been booked on preliminary charges of burglary and evading arrest.
