Meth-fueled police chase ends when perp totals Maricopa police car
By: -----
Maricopa, AZ - Maricopa Police Department this week released footage from a 2024 pursuit that left a squad car totaled in The Lakes at Rancho El Dorado. That crash-landed a Nebraska man in jail on 25 criminal charges.
The dash camera footage begins after officers received multiple reports that 49-year-old Ronnie Dolejs was driving erratically and doing donuts through the neighborhood. A caller told dispatchers that he would shoot Dolejs if he “attempted to hit him again,” according to a police report.
Footage shows Cpl. Erick Solis and Officer Cristian Cano Ortiz, racing to the scene in their police cruiser and trying to stop Dolejs’s 2004 GMC Sierra pickup truck. They followed the suspect driver down Bolivia Street, Cahill Drive and Liles Lane as he continued accelerating.
Dolejs nearly collided with the cruiser and that of another Maricopa police officer, Raynald St. Jour, who initiated a full-on pursuit. Several neighbors had exited their homes and watched the chase unfold from their front yards and driveways.
Police said Dolejs reached speeds of 70 miles per hour before St. Jour’s body camera footage shows the moment his unit is struck nearly head-on, sending smoke into the air and Dolejs’s vehicle into a parked car and a tree.
While he was still in his truck, wedged against the tree, officers told Dolejs to “let me see your f*cking hands” and to “open the f*cking door.” He eventually complied and was placed in handcuffs.
Once they wrangled him onto his stomach in a bed of landscaping rocks, officers made their frustrations clear, asking Dolejs: “Are you f*cking stupid?” to which he replied, “I guess so!”
Dolejs later told police he couldn’t see their red and blue lights and admitted to using meth not long earlier. They also found marijuana and multiple meth pipes in the truck. Police noted the damage to the patrol car totaled $60,104.
Dolejs was booked on 25 criminal charges: five counts of felony criminal damage, three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, three counts of aggravated assault, three counts of endangerment, disorderly conduct, reckless driving, criminal speed, unlawful flight, criminal damage, failure to yield, aggravated DUI, DUI drugs, driving with a suspended plate, criminal nuisance and failing to comply.
On April 2, Dolejs pleaded guilty to one felony count of aggravated assault involving a motor vehicle. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.