Fleeing suspect hits 2 Valley law enforcement officers with vehicle

PALMER — A man trying to avoid a warrant arrest wound up injuring two Alaska State Troopers with his car and was eventually apprehended after two separate car chases.

According to an AST press release, the incident started at 8:20 p.m., Wednesday evening when a woman reported she didn’t want her son, Michael Ingersol, 26, of Wasilla, at her home on Teeland Street in the neighborhoods off of Knik-Goose Bay Road near Clapp Street. She said she wanted troopers’ help in removing him.

“Ingersol was found to be on felony probation and had two outstanding felony warrants for probation violations,” troopers report.

So troopers responded. As they were walking up the driveway, Ingersol was backing down it in a blue Ford Taurus.

“They both were in full AST uniform and they both started to tell the driver to stop. The vehicle slowed down,” reads an affidavit Trooper Sgt. Daniel Cox filed in the case against Ingersol. “The vehicle then suddenly accelerated at them. They both attempted to move to the side of the driveway to keep from being struck, but the vehicle struck them.”

Those two troopers — Jared Noll and Charles Withers, according to Cox’s affidavit — got into their cars and gave chase, but Ingersol lost them in the subdivision streets.

Those troopers then drove themselves to the hospital where their injuries were deemed “not debilitating” and they were released, according to the press release.

A different affidavit, this one penned by Wasilla Police Department Officer Kristaps Petersons, picks up the story from here. At 9:18 p.m., Petersons writes that he heard about the car hitting Noll and Withers. At 11:40 p.m., he was sitting at the stoplight at Parks Highway and Main Street when he spotted a Ford Taurus in the nearby Tesoro station.

Petersons writes that he followed the car as it headed toward Herning Avenue before dropping back down to the Holiday station and stopping in that parking lot.

Petersons waited for another officer to arrive before he flipped on his lights and got out to confront Ingersol.

“I then ordered the driver … to shut off the engine of the vehicle while having the driver at gunpoint. I then noticed the vehicle had back up lights on and the vehicle backed up and sped off at a high rate of speed through the parking lot,” Petersons writes.

Petersons gave chase. Speeds at times topped 100 mph. Ingersol blasted through a red light at Parks Highway and Palmer-Wasilla Highway, exited at Seward Meridian Parkway and ran another light to get onto Fireweed Road. He shut his lights off after the Hyer Road intersection, but had them back on by Gershmel Loop. At Trunk, he came to a complete stop, briefly.

The chase continued onto Nelson Road, almost hitting Trooper Christopher Havens’ patrol vehicle on Bronco Avenue, and wound on through the subdivision from there. Twice Ingersol drove head-on at a Wasilla police officer and once made Havens take evasive action.

On Brome Avenue, Ingersol hit one set of trooper spike strips. On Abby Boulevard, he hit another, this set property of Wasilla PD.

He kept going, however, back onto Fireweed Road toward Old Matanuska Road, back up Seward Meridian, onto the Palmer-Wasilla Highway before finally stopping at Cottle Loop where Petersons and troopers ordered him out of his vehicle at gunpoint.

Petersons writes that the car smelled strongly of marijuana and there were small baggies inside, but that he was applying for a search warrant at the time he was writing the affidavit.

Ingersol was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on charges of driving on a suspended license, reckless driving, eluding arrest, and assault on a police officer charges, as well as one warrant already issued for his arrest.

Ingersol was still listed as an inmate in the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility Friday afternoon.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.