ST. GEORGE — What began with one officer noticing a car out of place during a late-night patrol over the weekend ended in the arrest of a man who now is being held without bail.
Shortly before midnight on Saturday, a patrol officer noticed a gold passenger car with California license plates parked in one of the rear lots of a business complex located along the 400 block of East Riverside Drive in St. George. According to charging documents filed by the St. George Police Department in support of the arrest, she hadn’t noticed the car during previous patrols of the area.
Upon running the license plate number through emergency dispatch, police say they discovered the vehicle was reported stolen out of Southern California.
While checking to see if the car was occupied, the officer noticed a man in the backseat of the vehicle and called for backup.
As multiple officers were responding to the call, the occupant was directed to exit the vehicle at gunpoint. After several commands, the suspect complied and was detained by police, the report states.
The suspect reportedly told officers his name was Manuel Garcia. But during a search of the vehicle, officers recovered several check stubs and an identification card issued out of Mexico that identified the suspect as 43-year-old Jose Miguel Martinez Jimenez, a Mexican National with no residential address listed in court records.
The officer reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department and confirmed the vehicle was reported stolen out of Southern California at the end of February. Jimenez was arrested and booked into the Washington County Purgatory Correctional Facility on second-degree vehicle theft and a misdemeanor charge of providing false information to a police officer.
Officers also requested that Jimenez be held without bail, citing the suspect poses “a substantial danger to any other individual or to the community,” or would likely flee the court’s jurisdiction. The request was approved and Jimenez remains in custody in Washington County without bail.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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