ST ANN, Mo. — The St. Ann Police Department is crediting a helpful tool and teamwork for its latest solved case.
It all started at about 3 p.m. Thursday at the QuikTrip on St. Charles Rock Road in St. Ann, where police said a man drove off in his girlfriend's red Dodge Challenger. Her 4-year-old son was inside.
“There was a domestic dispute between him and his girlfriend at the time,” Detective Lt. Monica Ruelas said.
Just second after he left the gas station, police got another 911 call reporting the same vehicle had crashed into another car and left the scene of the accident. But this time, they had a license plate number.
“We were able to plug that into the Flock camera system, which we utilize, and our dispatch was able to give us recent locations as to where that had hit based on the LPR cameras,” Ruelas said.
She’s talking about a network of license plate readers, called Flock, that gave them the latest location of the car with the child inside near Natural Bridge Avenue and Goodfellow Boulevard.
“They located the vehicle and conducted a stop with it after they traced it for about a minute in pursuit. I think he was going about over 100-120 mph at the time, and then he decided to pull over,” Ruelas said.
That’s where police arrested 37-year-old Kevin Quinn just five minutes after the first 911 call—proof that these tools worked exactly as they were supposed to.
“For such a small child to be involved in such a high-risk situation, it feels great to be able to have such a great solution to this,” Ruelas said.
Ruelas said while the license plate number helped these cameras can look at the whole picture to help solve crimes even across state lines.
“It captures details of the vehicle that other cameras might not or maybe don't record. So, it captures details such as the rim colors, the fender colors. I think these cameras are essential,”
The St. Ann Police Department said it is looking at installing more Flock cameras, as the department has seen how big of a difference they can make.
Prosecutors charged Quinn with engandering the welfare of a child, leaving the scene of an accident and resisting arrest. He was being held at the St. Louis County Justice Center on a $20,000 bond.
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