A woman that was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting on Saturday is now facing a world of additional charges. Shortly after her arrest in Lufkin, Texas, 33-year-old Toscha Sponsler, a resident of Pollok, was placed in a police SUV. It seems officers working for the Lufkin Police Department then made the mistake of leaving her alone in the vehicle, while they searched through her bags, containing various goods stolen from a local store.

As noted by ABC News and caught live on the surveillance cameras in the SUV, Sponsler can be seen initially seat-belted, while handcuffed, in the back of the vehicle.

She starts looking around and fiddling with her hands, finally slipping out of the handcuffs. She looks around again and then casually climbs through the window partition into the driver’s seat of the Police Car.

Shoplifter takes cops on a high speed chase

Suddenly officers start shouting as they realize what is happening and Sponsler takes off at full speed down the street in the stolen police car. Initially officers tried running after the SUV, but eventually, police vehicles chase after the stolen SUV, trying to get Sponsler off the road. Police can be seen to throw a spike strip across the street in an effort to stop her, but she swerves, managing to avoid it.

The video runs almost like an action movie right up to her arrest.

The car chase continued for 23 minutes until Sponsler finally crashed the SUV into a homeowner’s yard. Police catch up with her and eventually have to break the side window on the driver’s side to drag her out of the vehicle and take her into custody yet again.

The Lufkin Police Department said in a Facebook post that during the chase, officers could see Sponsler reaching in an attempt to grab the officer’s shotgun, which had fortunately been mechanically locked to the interior of the vehicle.

Watch the high-speed action as it happened in the video below.

New preventative measures to be added to police cars

Police added a little extra to the video, showing an officer placing a “tactical window limitation device” inside a patrol car, which will reportedly be a standard item in all marked units in the future. It ends with that officer giving a thumbs-up sign, while the hashtag #Foolmeonce appears on the screen.

Sponsler has now been booked into the Angelina County Jail on an $18,000 bond and is to be charged with a variety of new crimes including threat with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, escaping and evading arrest and unauthorized use of a police vehicle. She should have stuck to shoplifting.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED