Thomas Clarke, 41 (Photo / Cass County Jail)
FARGO (KFGO) – A man is in the Cass County Jail for charges of fleeing officers and illegal gun possession after fleeing from a Cass County Drug Task Force traffic stop.
Court Documents say Thomas Clarke, 41, was being monitored by Task Force Officers for transporting large amounts of methamphetamine and fentanyl from the Twin Cities to the Fargo-Moorhead area.
Officers tracked a phone belonging to a man known as “gold mouth”, who they believed to be Clarke. Officers observed Clarke’s phone location Thursday when he started traveling out of the Minneapolis area on westbound I-94. They found a vehicle Clarke was traveling in near Rothsay, Minnesota and tracked the vehicle until it entered Fargo. Officers then conducted a traffic stop on the Interstate near University Drive around 10 p.m. Thursday.
Officers found Clarke in the passenger seat of the vehicle during the stop. Court documents say while officers were interviewing the driver in a squad car, one of the passengers in the vehicle entered the driver’s seat and fled.
Clarke was later located at the intersection of 17th Ave S and 10th St S just after 11:20 p.m. where he was arrested after a brief struggle. Officers say he was sweating and appeared to have been running from the vehicle, which was four blocks away.
While searching the vehicle officers found a gun in the front passenger seat where Clarke was sitting during the traffic stop. They did not find any narcotics in the vehicle. Clarke said the gun did not belong to him. After reviewing Clarke’s criminal history in Minnesota’s Ramsey and Hennepin counties, it was found he had previous assault and threats of violence charges as well as a felony violation of a no contact order.
Clarke told officers he was not the person that drove the vehicle when it fled from the traffic stop. He told officers he did not want to answer clarifying questions and was taken to the Cass County Jail.
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