Video shows car theft suspects hop in Manatee River to avoid arrest, deputies say
Two 17-year-olds tried to escape deputies Wednesday night by swimming across the Manatee River after abandoning a stolen vehicle, the sheriff’s office said.
The teens were arrested on charges of possession of a stolen vehicle, fleeing to elude, trespassing in a conveyance and resisting an officer without violence, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office. Additional charges are expected from the Largo Police Department.
The Bradenton Herald does not name juvenile suspects.
Deputies were notified around 9:27 p.m. Wednesday that a white Toyota Camry reported stolen by the Largo Police Department had been spotted in the 8300 block of U.S. 301 North, the sheriff’s office said.
Deputies located the car in the parking lot of the nearby Sonic Drive-In and attempted a traffic stop. Investigators said the driver instead drove over a concrete median and into a nearby neighborhood. The sheriff’s office said deputies did not pursue the vehicle.
The abandoned Camry was later found on 80th Avenue East, where deputies established a perimeter while K-9 teams and the sheriff’s Aviation Unit searched for the suspects.
Video released by the sheriff’s office shows deputies tracking the teens from a sheriff’s helicopter as they ran across a yard, jumped a barbed-wire fence and crossed a field toward the Manatee River. The footage then appears to show the teens entering the water near a dock and swimming across the river as deputies monitored them from above.
“One’s not keeping up with the other one,” a deputy can be heard saying after one of the teens begins struggling in the water.
Deputies borrowed a small boat from a nearby resident and paddled to the struggling teen, taking him into custody. The sheriff’s office said the rescue prevented “what could have become a drowning.”
The helicopter continued tracking the other teen as he climbed ashore and pushed through mangroves before stopping near the water’s edge.
North River Fire District personnel transported a deputy by boat to the teen’s location, according to the sheriff’s office. The teen can be seen on video raising his hands as deputies approached and arrested him.
That teen later admitted to detectives that he stole the Camry in Largo and committed multiple vehicle burglaries there, according to the sheriff’s office.
Further information about the arrests was not immediately available Thursday afternoon.
