Red and Rover by Brian Basset for May 25, 2009

Morgan, Utah (Standard-Examiner) - The golf cart a 26-year-old man used to elude Morgan County Sheriff’s deputies for a day was no ordinary scooter. “Normally, golf carts can’t jump irrigation ditches,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Scott Peay said.

Peay and another deputy gave chase when they saw the golf cart spinning donuts, doing wheelies, and generally tearing up the grounds at Morgan City Park at about 11 p.m. Aug. 16. “I lit them up with a spotlight and everybody fled,” Peay said. Three people were in the golf cart and two on foot, all heading in separate directions. “We concentrated on the cart.”

The short chase over a period of less than five minutes led through parking lots and lawns, to State Street in downtown Morgan city, and finally to an alfalfa field where the cart - with only a driver on board by then - got away. Peay believes the cart, obviously powered by more than the usual electric motor such carts use, was fitted with a car engine.

“It wasn’t any faster than us, but in the alfalfa field it was jumping irrigation ditches,” Peay said. “We couldn’t get through the ditches.” But the officers recognized the driver as Trev Dawson, of Morgan city, someone they’d arrested before on minor charges, and pulled his booking mug. He was arrested the next day at his grandmother’s house.

The cart wasn’t Dawson’s, but he was among those who tinkered with it to give it its extra horsepower, Peay said. It has since disappeared, he said. “No one would disclose who owned it. It’s probably sitting in someone’s barn now.”