Sometimes the worst thing a person can do is drive away. For a 44-year-old Milwaukee man named Dewayne Stokes, that choice turned a routine traffic stop into a multi-agency pursuit, a crash landing in a Wisconsin field, and a new stack of serious criminal charges to go along with the ones he was already facing.
It started on the morning of May 9, just after 9 a.m., when a Wisconsin State Patrol trooper pulled over a vehicle on Interstate 41 northbound near USH 151 in Fond du Lac County. What should have been a straightforward stop quickly got complicated. A check on the driver revealed a felony warrant out of Kenosha County for failure to appear in court on a stolen vehicle case. On top of that, a caution indicator was flagged for the driver, prompting the trooper to call for backup.
Deputies from the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office responded. As the additional units arrived on scene, Stokes apparently decided backup was his cue to leave, and he drove off from the traffic stop entirely. It is worth pointing out that this man was already out on a $5,000 signature bond from Kenosha County for a stolen vehicle. So the decision to run was, to put it diplomatically, not his finest moment.
What followed was a chase that covered approximately 4.5 miles, wound through a business parking lot, onto Pioneer Road, back onto I-41, and eventually off the highway near Winnebago Street, where things got dramatically airborne. The Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office later released dashcam and bodycam footage of the pursuit, and it is exactly as chaotic as it sounds.
How the Chase Unfolded
Head to 2:20 in the video below to see the insane air this vehicle gets as the driver attempts to run from the cops!
After Stokes drove away from the initial stop, deputies temporarily lost track of the vehicle before another deputy spotted it speeding near the Military Road exit off I-41. The driver briefly stopped at the top of the off-ramp, and for a moment, it looked like things might de-escalate. They did not. Stokes reversed the vehicle until he could turn north onto Military Road, and the chase was officially on.
The pursuit cut through a business parking lot, continued north on Pioneer Road, looped back onto I-41, and exited near Winnebago Street. At that point, the driver lost control of the vehicle. The car went into a ditch, traveled up an embankment, and went airborne before landing in an adjacent field. Remarkably, no other vehicles were involved in the crash, and the sheriff’s office confirmed there was no property damage from the chase itself.
Foot Chase, Taser, and Arrest
The crash did not end things immediately. Both Stokes and a passenger bolted from the wrecked vehicle and ran, triggering a short foot chase. Deputies caught up with Stokes and deployed a taser to take him into custody. He was transported to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries before being booked into the Fond du Lac County Jail.
The charges Stokes is now facing include fleeing and eluding an officer, first-degree recklessly endangering safety, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. That last charge is notable. He was already on bond for a stolen vehicle case, and now faces a felony weapons charge layered on top of everything else. The legal situation has escalated considerably from where it started.
What This Incident Reminds Us About Warrant Stops and Bail
There is a broader conversation embedded in this story that goes beyond the dashcam footage and the airborne car. Stokes was already out on a $5,000 signature bond, meaning he had been released without having to pay cash upfront, on the condition that he show up to court. He did not do that, which is how the felony warrant ended up in the system in the first place. When the trooper ran his information during the traffic stop, the warrant was right there waiting.
Incidents like this one often resurface the debate around signature bonds and pretrial release conditions, particularly for defendants with existing felony cases. Whether that conversation leads to any policy change is for lawmakers to sort out, but from a practical standpoint, this chase illustrates what can happen when someone with an active warrant and a caution flag decides a traffic stop is optional. The dashcam footage released by the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office tells the rest of the story pretty clearly, and it ends in a field somewhere off I-41.