Three Pace residents remain in custody after eluding the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s office on Friday by speeding away after pulling over for a traffic stop.
Holly Elizabeth Caudle, Johnathon Randolph Gafford and Teresa Augusta Weber are facing charges of resisting an officer along Avalon Boulevard near Cyanamid Road.
An officer attempted to pull over a Ford Explorer driven by Gafford for exceeding the speed limit. According to the police report, the officer activated the emergency lights to pull the vehicle over.
Once the two vehicles stopped along Avalon, the suspect’s vehicle, described as a red Ford Explorer, sped off when the officer exited his vehicle to approach the driver on foot. The responding officer reportedly lost sight of the Explorer after it passed through a red light without stopping.
The department was able to locate the same vehicle near Covenant Circle in Pace, due to a reckless driver complaint. Officers later located the vehicle after viewing surveillance video from a nearby residence. In the video, officers reported seeing all three suspects flee from the vehicle into a nearby wooded area.
Gafford was later seen returning the same vehicle and moving the Explorer into a nearby residential driveway. After parking the vehicle, Gafford returned into the wooded area on foot.
The suspects were later located in the Kings Oak Court, where Gafford was found underneath a front porch of a mobile home. Both female suspects were located by officers underneath another mobile home front porch in the same area.
In the report, Caudle told police she was in the vehicle with the other two suspects, when Gafford eluded the officer in the traffic stop. Caudle also told police she was scared and did not want to go jail.
Caudle is also facing charges of robbery and cruelty towards a child from an incident in August.
In the Oct. 31 arrest report, the arresting officer also stated that he was informed by a correctional officer at the Santa Rosa County Jail that Caudle was talking about disposing of narcotics while in the facility’s intake room.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Pace residents charged after fleeing police