Representative image: a C6-generation Chevrolet Corvette, the same generation as the 2007 car deputies say was stolen. Photo: Charles from Port Chester, New York / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
A family member posted bond on Oct. 11 to get 18-year-old Braiden Billings out of the Jasper County Jail, where he was being held on an assault charge. The next evening, according to the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office, that relative’s 2007 Chevrolet Corvette was going more than 140 mph west on Interstate 80 with Billings driving.
The sheriff’s office laid out the timeline in a press release, published in full by Ottumwa Radio. Criminal complaints in the case, reported by the Newton Daily News, add the rest. Newton police took a stolen-vehicle report at about 5:08 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 12. The owner, who is 70, told officers Billings broke into a locked detached garage and drove off in the car.
At about 7:58 p.m., a sheriff’s deputy spotted the Corvette westbound near mile marker 150 and tried to stop it near the Mitchellville rest area. The driver kept going into Polk County. The sheriff’s office says he then put the car into a ditch on purpose northeast of Altoona, where it came to rest in a bean field. Billings and his passenger, Natalee Ryan, 18, also of Newton, were taken into custody “without further incident.” The Iowa State Patrol and the Colfax and Prairie City police departments assisted.
Both are presumed innocent. The release names no attorneys and lists no court dates.
Three hours on a stolen car
According to the complaints, the official supervising Billings told police he cut off his ankle monitor around 5 p.m., minutes after taking the car, and left it near Highway T-12 and Highway 6. If that’s right, the theft, the dumped monitor and the stolen-car report all happened within about 10 minutes of each other.
Then the record goes blank until 7:58. Mile marker 150 is roughly 15 miles west of Newton’s I-80 exits. Neither the release nor the complaints, as reported, say where the Corvette was for the nearly three hours in between, how long the pursuit lasted, or how deputies arrived at the 140 mph figure. From the 150 marker to the Altoona interchanges is less than 10 miles of interstate, so at the alleged speed the run on I-80 would have been over in a few minutes.
Ryan told police she knew neither she nor Billings, whom she described as her boyfriend, was allowed to drive the car, the complaints say, and that the two planned to run away after an incident involving Billings the night before. The reporting on the complaints doesn’t describe that incident. Police say Billings made statements after his arrest showing he knew the car was stolen.
How a $17,000 Corvette becomes a Class B felony
Billings faces first-degree theft of a motor vehicle (a Class C felony), first-degree theft against an older individual (Class B), felony eluding at more than 25 mph over the limit (Class D), a red-light violation and three stop-sign violations. His bond is $41,151.52. Ryan faces one count, the older-individual theft charge, with bond set at $25,000.
The value of the car is what sets the floor. Under Iowa Code section 714.2, stealing property worth more than $10,000 is first-degree theft, a Class C felony. The complaints put this C6 at about $17,000.
The owner’s age raises the ceiling. Section 714.2A, Iowa’s elder-theft statute, moves a theft up one class when the victim is 60 or older and the defendant knew or should have known it. First-degree theft against an older individual is a Class B felony, which in Iowa carries up to 25 years, against 10 for a Class C. The state has to show the “knew or should have known” part, and here the alleged victim is the relative who posted Billings’s bond the day before.
That statute is also why Ryan, who isn’t accused of driving, faces the same top charge as Billings. The eluding count under section 321.279 becomes a felony at 25 mph over the limit. I-80 in that area is posted at 70, so the alleged speed was twice the limit, and the eluding count is still the lightest felony on his list.
It’s the third Corvette pursuit past 130 mph we’ve covered this month, after a 19-year-old Florida troopers say took I-275’s last exit at 130 mph with no lights on and a Corvette New York troopers clocked at 154 mph before it turned up burning in Clifton Park.
What comes next
Iowa’s criminal procedure rules generally give prosecutors 45 days from arrest to file a formal charging document, which for an Oct. 12 arrest falls around Nov. 26. That filing will show whether the county attorney keeps both first-degree theft counts against Billings for the same car, and whether the Class B count against Ryan survives. Nothing released so far says what the original assault case involved or whether the relative’s bond on it has been revoked.
Should a theft from the relative who just bailed you out get the elder-theft bump, or is that a family dispute with a felony price tag?
Sources: Jasper County Sheriff’s Office press release; criminal complaints as reported by the Newton Daily News; Iowa Code sections 714.2, 714.2A and 321.279. Featured image: Charles from Port Chester, New York / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (representative).
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