The Iowa State Patrol said a man from Dallas Center stole a cruiser Tuesday afternoon and led authorities on a chase that ended in Madison County. State Patrol Trooper Alex Dinkla says 31-year-old Brandon Eugene Doerring, of Dallas Center, is charged with Eluding, OWI, Theft of a Motor Vehicle, and Assault on an Officer.

The pursuit started on Interstate 80 in Dallas County and ended at around 1:45-p.m. in the 1400 block of Tree Line Ct in rural Madison County. Several law enforcement agencies participated in the chase. Doerring who was alone at the time he was apprehended, was transported to the Dallas County Jail and charged with numerous criminal offenses.

Photos via the Madison County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

The stolen State Patrol vehicle and a Dallas County patrol vehicle sustained moderate to severe damage during the pursuit. There were no injuries were reported. According to Iowa State Patrol Trooper Alex Dinkla, the incident began when a trooper checking on a disabled vehicle on Interstate 80 near Dexter, saw Doerring walking along the roadway. Dinkla said the trooper found drug paraphernalia on Doerring and took him into custody, but the man was somehow able to steal the trooper’s vehicle.

Authorities were investigating how Doerring managed  to take control of the Patrol’s unmarked Dodge Charger. They say Doerring was still handcuffed as he exited the car.

A man from Avoca pulled two people from a fiery crash on Interstate 80 and McPherson Avenue in Council Bluffs,Tuesday morning. Those people are recovering in the hospital. KETV reports Runk Wood was driving to work from Avoca to Lincoln, NE. when he came upon the scene near mile marker 7. Council Bluffs Police say the car was stopped in the middle of the interstate when when it was hit by a truck at around 5:27-a.m., Tuesday.

The impact sent the vehicle across the lanes of traffic before it hit a metal barricade and caught fire. Wood stopped and heard a girl screaming. He pulled the driver to safety first. Then he realized there was someone else in the car, so he rescued that person too. Both the driver and passenger were transported to the University of Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. They were reported to be in critical but stable condition.

Wood suffered from some minor burns during the rescue.

(Radio Iowa) – Preliminary information from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows a 35-percent increase in opioid overdose deaths in 2020 when compared to 2019. The director of the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy, Dale Woolery says the record 212 deaths come despite a lot of work on the issue. “We would like to see the numbers go the other direction and they had for a couple of years. I think the moral of the story as we are looking at various sources of data on the opioid epidemic is that epidemic is still with us,” Woolery says.

Woolery says not all the trends in the fight have been negative. “We have made progress and we do have one of the lower rates of drug overdose deaths in the nation — and we don’t want to rest on that,” Woolery says. He says there’s been a lot done to address the issue. “Some of the progress includes ramping up access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction. There’s more access and use of naloxone –which is the opioid overdose reversal or rescue drug,” according to Woolery. “There are fewer prescription opioids being prescribed, and the prescription monitoring program is being used more by health professionals to try and control for the prescription opioid outflow and misuse.”

Woolery says some of the other factors in the increase in death include the mixing of black-market fentanyl into heroin by drug dealers. “So as a user — if you think you are getting heroin or just a little bit of fentanyl, but instead you are getting pure fentanyl or something that is mostly fentanyl — that may not be what you thought. That could be one of the contributing factors to some of the opioid deaths,” he says.Woolery says the pandemic and the isolation it brought on is also a factor. “It’s like a lot of other things with the pandemic — because of the increased isolation that has occurred — there is less opportunity to monitor behavior and to intervene when it is called for,” Woolery says.

The 212 overdose deaths broke the record of 206 deaths set in 2017.