WINONA, Minn. – After almost six hours of an on-again off-again pursuit that began with a missing wallet, police had Demandre Tyshann Andrew Frazier of La Crosse behind locked in cell Among other charges Frazier was accused of theft and fleeing police.
Stolen wallet and fraud
The case began routinely enough: A shopper returned to the Walmart service desk about 845 p.m. to ask if anyone had turned in her wallet. She thought perhaps she had had left it behind, Inside, she said, was $300. Then she received an alert from her credit card company that a $27 charge had been made on her card half a mile away at the Kwik Trip at East Broadway and Mankato streets. The card had been in the wallet. Police checked Kwik Trip surveillance video and identified the thief’s car.
Get-away flight on slick streets
Around 10:30 p.m. an officer spotted the car near Fourth and Adams streets, also on the Far East End. The driver sped away and zipped through stop signs at cross streets. After six blocks the officer terminated the chase: The driver was reckless at 40 mph on slick streets and the risk of a wreck was unwarranted for a misdemeanor case of a $27 fraudulent credit card charge. Later the car was located in the 450 block of Mankato Avenue – all this in roughly the same neighborhood. The car was abandoned. Police impounded the vehicle.
The guy’s favorite Kwik Trip
About 2:40 a.m. police received a call from a clerk at the all-night Kwik Trip at Broadway and Mankato where the $27 credit card charge had been made: The guy had come back. Police spotted Frazier on foot two blocks away. He gave a false name, but police figured out who he was in an online check of old jail mugshots. He ran. By this point a sheriff’s deputy had arrived and joined the chase. The deputy tackled Frazier. Still resisting, Frazier was dragged by his feet to a squad car. He was booked at 4:14 a.m. with a new mugshot added to the collection.
Frazier. Booked for theft, fraud and fleeing. No stranger in the Winona County jail. Last time was in 2021 after a lengthy Wisconsin police chase, also on slippery winter roads.