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TWIN FALLS, Idaho — A Nampa woman is accused of leading police on a 100 miles per hour chase in her rental car and then hiding, while her passenger allegedly broke into a nearby home and put on a deceased man’s clothing.
Elizabeth Shea Brandt, 24, and Daniel F. Sena, 25, were arraigned Monday in Twin Falls County Fifth District Court, the Times-News reported.
Brandt is charged with felony fleeing from an officer and felony possession of a controlled substance, and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia, resisting/obstructing an officer and providing false information.
Sena is charged with four misdemeanors: resisting or obstructing an officer, unlawful entry, possession of drug paraphernalia and providing false information.
According to court documents, a law enforcement officer saw a vehicle around noon Friday with Utah license plates traveling east at about 70 miles per hour on Highway 30 between Ring and Clark corners in Twin Falls County. The posted speed limit is 60 miles per hour.
As the officer looked for a safe place to turn around his vehicle, he saw the car “gaining speed rapidly.”
The officer accelerated to about 100 miles per hour in order to catch up but the vehicle was still pulling away from the officer.
The vehicle slowed down for a stop sign at Black Bear corner, but then ran the stop sign and nearly collided with a black pick-up truck.
After driving up a steep hill, the officer lost sight of the vehicle and stayed in the area attempting to find it. He witnessed Brandt running west on foot and “started to follow with haste.”
He then witnessed a man — Sena, who was later discovered to be the passenger in the vehicle — running south and west along a shallow canal before disappearing into a corn field. The officer followed him to Deep Creek and Sena entered a corn field.
When the officer arrived back at his vehicle, Brandt’s car was gone.
“Elizabeth waited for me to leave and then got back in the car and left the area,” he wrote.
The officer later found Brandt’s car in the area of 100 East 4200 North. Brandt was hiding nearby under trees along a ditch. The officer handcuffed her and put her in the patrol vehicle.
The vehicle she was driving — a rental car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car — was towed.
The officer found a glass pipe with a “white crystalline substance” inside of it in the passenger front door, a small amount of marijuana in a jar and pliers with burn marks on them next to the glass pipe.
Meanwhile, an area resident saw Sena “without shoes or shirt running around a house that was currently unoccupied.” The elderly homeowner is in Arizona for the winter.
The officer discovered only one locked room in the house, where Sena was in a closet. He was wearing clothing from the homeowner’s deceased husband.
When the officer asked him if he was the homeowner, he said yes. But when the officer informed him the homeowner is a woman in her 80s, Sena responded: “What the — ever. All this for a traffic stop?”
The homeowner told the officer she doesn’t know Sena and hadn’t given him permission to be on the property.
Sena and Brandt were booked into Twin Falls County Jail.
Brandt’s bond is set at $25,000 and a preliminary hearing is Nov. 17. Sena’s bond is set at $15,000 and a pretrial conference is Dec. 27.
