High-speed chase leads to drug charges

A Great Falls man is in state District Court in Havre after a high-speed chase ended with a drug task force searching his vehicle.

Andrew S. Ketchum, born in 1988, is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 6 on two felony counts of drug possession and another of possession of property — more than $1,900 in cash — subject to forfeiture and a felony count of tampering with evidence, as well as misdemeanor counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and of marijuana.

According to a court document, Rocky Boy police officers called the Tri-Agency Safe Trails Task Force after a chase led them from the old police department at the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation agency to Fresno Road on U.S. Highway 87.

The officers told the task force representative that after they deployed spiked “stop sticks” and succeeded in stopping the vehicle, marijuana, syringes and cash was in plain view in the car.

The chase started after Rocky Boy officers made a traffic stop on the car Ketchum was driving and ended up arresting two men who were passengers in the vehicle. After they were arrested, Ketchum “took off in the vehicle,” leading Rocky Boy officers on a vehicle pursuit across the reservation and along Highway 87, the document says.

When the Rocky Boy officers stopped the vehicle, Ketchum was talking on a cellphone, the document says. When he was arrested, $1,950 was found in his wallet, which the drug-detecting dog Robo later indicated had been mingled with drugs the dog is trained to detect.

Visible in the car, officers found syringes, some used and one with a clear liquid inside, and a gallon-sized bag that appeared to contain methamphetamine and a bag, which appeared to have been bitten open, that appeared to contain marijuana.

The drug dog Thor alerted officers to the presence of drugs in the driver’s door area. Officers found a cellphone, marijuana in a bag and in a joint, cotton swabs, syringes, a spoon, three syringes with a liquid that later tested positive for heroin, another syringe with a liquid that tested positive for methamphetamine.