Tombstone, Arizona, has spent about 145 years selling visitors on one half-minute in 1881, when lawmen and cowboys shot it out in a vacant lot on Fremont Street. The town’s latest run-in with the law was less cinematic. It involved a stolen BMW on its roof, a foot chase, and a Circle K that kept turning up in the official account.
According to a statement posted by the Tombstone Marshal’s Office, deputies tried to stop a BMW X5 that had been identified as stolen as it headed east on State Route 80 near mile post 315 on Friday, Sept. 25. The driver didn’t yield. The pursuit ran toward town, and as the BMW entered Tombstone, the marshal’s office says, the driver lost control. The SUV left the road, rolled over twice and came to rest on its roof on Sumner Street near Safford Street.
Both people inside got out and ran. The pursuing deputy caught the passenger almost immediately after that person ran down Safford Street, the office said. The driver made it farther, and was arrested by a deputy on the side of the town’s Circle K.
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The Circle K was busier than it looked
That wasn’t the convenience store’s only part in the story. As the investigation went on, officers found another vehicle, one the marshal’s office describes as “involved in the transportation of the stolen vehicles,” sitting in the same Circle K parking lot. Its driver was arrested and taken to the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office jail, where the BMW’s driver and passenger were also booked.
So by the office’s account, the fleeing driver and what it calls a transport vehicle both ended up at the same gas station, in a town of 1,308 people as of the 2020 census.
Two more SUVs left on the shoulder
Back on SR 80, near mile post 313.5, about a mile and a half from where deputies first tried to stop the BMW, a deputy found two more vehicles abandoned along the highway: a Hyundai Palisade and a Kia Telluride. License plate checks confirmed both had been reported stolen, according to the marshal’s office, and deputies processed them for evidence before they were removed.
The Palisade and Telluride are corporate siblings, three-row family haulers from Hyundai Motor Group that have long shared their underpinnings. Whoever parked them on the shoulder of a desert highway left behind a matched set.
Five vehicles, four places
Investigators eventually tied five vehicles reported stolen from the Phoenix area, roughly 180 miles away, to the incident. All five were recovered: three around Tombstone, one outside Saint David and one that had headed back toward Tucson.
The recoveries were a joint effort by the marshal’s office, the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office and the Benson Police Department. Sheriff’s personnel reconstructed the rollover, and sheriff’s detectives helped identify the BMW’s driver and passenger. The Tombstone Volunteer Fire Department secured the crash scene.
What the statement doesn’t say
The statement, signed by Marshal Robert Randall, doesn’t name any of the three people arrested, list charges, or say whether anyone was hurt in the rollover. It also doesn’t explain how the vehicles were taken, how the BMW was flagged on SR 80, or where the group was headed. Everyone arrested is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
Tombstone is small enough that its law enforcement agency is still a marshal’s office staffed by deputies, a holdover that fits the town’s Old West brand. Departments of every size are still looking for ways to end chases before they end in a rollover, from plate cameras like the one that flagged a stolen Honda in Miami-Dade to tools like the Grappler police bumper.
The 1881 gunfight is famous partly because it was over so fast. This one took a highway pursuit, two rolls, a foot chase, three agencies and five recovered vehicles, and a surprising share of it happened at a Circle K.
If you live on a two-lane state highway, how often does a chase come through town, and do you want police running it to the end?