Drone search ends in surrender
Staff writer
Police and sheriff’s deputies aided by a thermal drone overhead searched through soybean and grass fields overnight Wednesday near 240th and Kanza Rds. for a domestic violence and kidnapping suspect.
Although a heat signature of the suspect was identified in one of the fields, drone batteries had to be changed, and the suspect got away, surrendering peacefully Thursday evening at police headquarters to Chief Aaron Slater, whom he apparently trusted because of previous dealings with him as a police officer.
Dirk E. Young, 30, of Marion, was arrested on suspicion of aggravated domestic battery, aggravated kidnapping, making a criminal threat, criminal restraint, aggravated child endangerment, interfering with law enforcement, and theft. The kidnapping charge, Slater said, involved not taking a victim away but rather holding a victim against her will.
Young was jailed in lieu of posting a $250,000 bond. A full offense report is pending.
The incident started about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday at a home the suspect shares with his “significant other” and their young children in the 400 block of N. Freeborn St., Slater said. A neighbor called 911 to report it as physical altercation with children involved.
Police arrived within 3 minutes, Slater said, but the suspect had driven away. By midnight, through investigative work, police and sheriff’s deputies found Young’s car at a residence near 250th and Kanza Rds, but he was not in the house.
They searched nearby fields for four hours with a drone, twice locating a thermal image of the suspect. But by then the drone’s batteries needed a change. When it was flying again over law enforcement vehicles driving through the fields, there was no sign of the suspect.
The search was called off at 5:30 a.m., Slater said.
There were no allegations that the suspect was carrying a weapon; he does own a gun, Slater said.
Young contacted dispatchers by phone later Thursday morning asking specifically for Slater, who was not on duty. O(fficers on the phone could not persuade Young to turn himself in then.
“At about 8 Thursday evening, he finally walked over and turned himself in,” Slater said. “I know him and have a decent rapport with him. I did try to talk to him, to make him still feel like a person.”