Utah man arrested following assault on security guard in Nevada and scuffle with trooper in Arizona
ST GEORGE Utah May 31 2022 — A reported assault on a security guard in a Mesquite, Nevada, casino Saturday ended in an arrest hours later, after a pursuit and physical tussle with police.
The arrest stems from an incident that was set in motion when emergency dispatch received a call from one of the Mesquite area hotels reporting a disturbance in the early morning hours of Saturday.
The call involved a man who was in one of the area casinos when he reportedly became unruly, Arizona Department of Public Safety Trooper Thomas Callister said, adding the suspect’s behavior caught the attention of a security guard who confronted the man.
During the exchange, the suspect reportedly punched the security guard in the face and then fled from the hotel and drove off.
Officers were called in but the suspect was already gone when the first officers arrived, and after a search of the area, officers were unable to locate the suspect. Soon after, an “attempt to locate” was broadcast out to all law enforcement agencies in the surrounding area to be on the lookout for the suspect who was driving a red pickup truck.
It was that same broadcast that caught Callister’s attention when he began his shift on Saturday morning, an alert that was still active hours later.
Shortly after 11 a.m. MDT, emergency dispatch began receiving calls reporting a reckless driver who was weaving across the roadway as the truck headed south on Interstate 15 near the Cedar Pocket exit.
Callister, who was stationed near the Desert Springs exit in Arizona, which was 11 miles south of where the suspect was first spotted, noticed several red pickup trucks, he said, before one particular red truck seen off in the distance caught his attention – one that had a very distinct feature wedged below the undercarriage of the truck as it continued south.
“(It) had one of those large traffic barrels stuck underneath it,” Callister said, “And I thought to myself ‘that’s probably my truck.’”
The trooper got behind the vehicle to conduct a traffic stop and spoke to the driver, who Callister said showed several indications that led him to believe the man was ready to drive off, which is when he went to his patrol vehicle and grabbed a set of “stop sticks” that he threw under the front wheel of the pickup.
The driver became upset and was asked to step out of the vehicle, but instead he took off with the trooper in pursuit.
The pursuit headed south at more than 100 mph, and as it continued, the suspect changed speeds quickly and intermittently, as the driver continued braking quickly and then speeding up. Callister said the driving was so erratic the suspect spun around in the median and nearly struck the side panel of the trooper’s vehicle in a T-bone style crash, which Callister narrowly avoided when he stepped on the gas.
After several more minutes of pursuing the suspect, the trooper grabbed his mobile PA and ordered the suspect to pull over.
“And surprisingly, after a mile or so he did,” Callister added.
The suspect was ordered out of his vehicle at gunpoint, and as soon as he was out of the truck he resisted arrest and a physical altercation quickly ensued.
Meanwhile, additional officers from surrounding areas were called in to assist, including officers from Utah, and multiple units made their way to where the traffic stop was taking place, after multiple attempts to contact the trooper by emergency dispatch went unanswered.
Minutes after the altercation began, the suspect was taken into custody and was loaded into Callister’s patrol vehicle to be transported to the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas. The suspect became combative during the transport and began kicking the doors to the patrol vehicle, causing a significant amount of damage in the process.
The suspect also slammed his head against the side of the patrol vehicle multiple times, causing several lacerations to his head.
At that point, the Nevada Highway Patrol and tribal police officers responded to where the trooper had pulled off at Nevada mile post 75, and from there, Callister continued transporting the suspect to the jail in Las Vegas – escorted by two Nevada Highway Patrol troopers in the event there were any further problems.
The suspect was identified as 43-year-old Jeffery Dante Norton of Vernal who has multiple cases and convictions for aggravated assault, evading, DUI, prisoner assaults and other crimes, according to court records.
Norton was later picked up from the detention center in Las Vegas and transported to the Mohave County Jail in Kingman, Arizona, where he was booked on multiple charges, including aggravated assault on a police officer, as well as unlawful flight, endangerment and criminal damage.
Callister said the level of violence and heightened level of combativeness, such as what was demonstrated during this incident, used to be a rare occurrence that troopers encountered every few months or so.
That all changed after 2020, he said, and what used to be a rarity has now become much more common, and traffic stops, encounters and other situations seem to be escalating at a faster pace.
“It’s crazy how fast things have changed here,” he said.
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.
