Bermuda Dunes man pleads guilty in wild chase case
A man who led sheriff’s deputies on a wild chase from Indio to Palm Desert, resulting in two crashes that left a deputy hospitalized, pleaded guilty today to assault on a peace officer and evading arrest charges and was immediately sentenced to a dozen years in state prison.
Joshua Keplinger, 25, of Bermuda Dunes, was approached around 3:20 p.m. on May 10, 2016, by sheriff’s deputies who wanted to question him regarding a vehicle shooting investigation in which he was a potential suspect. He was sitting inside his parked car in Indio at the time, sheriff’s Deputy Armando Munoz said.
Upon seeing the deputies, Keplinger fled, hitting one of the deputies with his car and triggering a pursuit that involved multiple law enforcement vehicles chasing him through Indio, La Quinta, Indian Wells and Palm Desert, according to Munoz.
During the chase, one deputy’s cruiser overturned near Miles Avenue, west of Jefferson Street in La Quinta. The deputy was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, Munoz said.
As the pursuit continued into Palm Desert, another deputy’s patrol car crashed into an uninvolved motorist’s vehicle near the intersection of Cook Street and Fred Waring Drive, causing minor injuries to that driver and sending the deputy to a hospital for a precautionary evaluation, he said.
Keplinger eventually pulled into the parking lot of an Applebee’s restaurant at 74999 Frank Sinatra Drive and surrendered to deputies, Munoz said.
He had been set to go to trial this week in connection with the chase when he entered guilty pleas to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer and one count of felony evading.
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