Staff Report

WARSAW — A Goshen man will serve time in prison for a February incident that involved a stolen vehicle.

Tony Yowell

Tony Jordan Yowell, 24, 20210 CR 21, Goshen, was sentenced in Kosciusko Superior Court 1 Monday, June 6.

On Feb. 17, the Kosciusko County 911 Center received a call from Onstar regarding the theft of a vehicle that had been stolen from the Wabash area. Onstar staff, who were tracking the vehicle through GPS monitoring, reported that the vehicle was in Kosciusko County.

According to court documents, Claypool’s town marshal found the vehicle traveling north on SR 15. 

The suspect vehicle passed a Kosciusko County deputy in the area of Fruitridge Drive in Warsaw. When the suspect vehicle passed the deputy, the driver of the vehicle, later identified as Yowell, looked at the deputy and immediately sped up. Yowell nearly hit a white box truck he was following and continued north on Fisher Avenue in Warsaw while fleeing officers.

Onstar was able to reduce the vehicle’s speed to 5 mph. As the vehicle lost acceleration, the driver’s door opened and Yowell jumped out of the vehicle, fleeing on foot.

Officers saw Yowell jump a fence and run north toward Lakeland Drive. They pursued Yowell by following footprints in the snow and found him hiding in a vehicle.

When Yowell jumped from the stolen vehicle and ran from police, he left the vehicle in gear. The vehicle continued rolling toward nearby vehicles that were stopped for law enforcement. To protect these drivers and their vehicles, a Warsaw Police officer positioned her police vehicle to sustain the impact from the stolen vehicle. The stolen vehicle continued north and hit the officer’s police car, causing damage to the vehicle but no personal injury.

During the vehicle pursuit, the Claypool marshal saw Yowell throw an item out of the vehicle. After the pursuit, the marshal and a Warsaw Police detective searched the area and found a handgun on the ground. The weather conditions were snowy and the handgun was not covered in snow.

Officers later learned that Yowell was a suspect in several other auto thefts in Elkhart and Marshall counties. Yowell was also previously convicted of escape, theft of a firearm, possession of a syringe and two counts of failure to return to lawful detention, all out of Elkhart County.

Yowell pleaded guilty to carrying a handgun without a license, a class A misdemeanor; resisting law enforcement and auto theft, both level 6 felonies; carrying a handgun without a license, enhancement, a level 5 felony; and a habitual offender enhancement.

According to the terms of the plea agreement, Judge Karin McGrath sentenced Yowell to a total of seven years at the Indiana Department of Corrections, with two years of the sentence suspended and ordered to be served on formal probation. 

In court Monday, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joseph Sobek said, “The criminal history (Yowell) has accumulated by the age of 24 is astounding.”

Sobek added that he hopes Yowell goes to IDOC and takes advantage of programs offered there and decides he does not want to live this way anymore.

Yowell was given 109 days of jail time credit and ordered to pay $280.53 in restitution to the City of Warsaw.