LACROSSE, Wis. — A West Salem man was booked on numerous felony charges a after a 100-mph chase that culminated up a brewery grain elevator on Mississippi River in LaCrosse. Chase Allen Cottrell, 24, had climbed a ladder up the grain solo and shouted to pursing officers to let him be or he’d jump. This was early Saturday after the chase, which began in Houston County on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi. Cottrell eventually surrendered and was taken to a LaCrosse hospital. After being cleared medically, Cottrell resisted going to jail, police said. At jail he was booked with an expectation of being sent to back Houston County. The interim charges: Assault with a dangerous weapon, domestic violence and strangulation, fleeing police, and car theft. Pending a court hearing after the weekend, he was held without bail in the LaCosse County jail. Cottrell has previous felony convictions for battery, motor vehicle theft, fleeing police and robbery, according to records. Police sad this is what happened Saturday:
Cottrell. Intercepted in LaCrose after 10-mile police chase from Hokah and 13 miles from home in West Salem.
> About 3 a.m. a caller reported domestic abuse in Hokah involving Cottrell and a girlfriend.
> Deputies located the girlfriend’s car, in which she and Corell were siting.
> Police asked the girlfriend to exit the vehicle so they could ask her outside of Cottrell’s earshot for her account of what was going on. She got out.
> Cottrell started the car and drove away at high speed.
> Cottrell accelerated to 100 mph-plus, even 105 mph in a 40-mph zone through La Crescent. In LaCrescent he turned right toward LaCrosse.
> Across the Cass Stret intestate bridge, in LaCrosse, Cottrell abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot.
> He jumped into the Mississippi River, swam to an anchored barge, and climbed aboard.
> Then he climbed a built-in ladder up the brewery silo.