SAGINAW, MI —

An alleged scam to return a stolen toilet and sink to a Saginaw Township store for profit landed a woman in jail after she nearly hit a police officer with her car and crashed after a high-speed chase that ended in Saginaw, according to police.

The incident began at Menards on State near Wieneke in Saginaw Township while a police officer was investigating a retail fraud report about 8:20 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19, according to Saginaw Township Police Lt. Gary Grauf.

Employees of Menards had called to report that a woman was trying to return a toilet and sink, valued at about $200 each, to the Saginaw Township store after the same items were reported stolen from a Menards in Mount Pleasant earlier that same day, police said.

Upon arrival, the officer noticed a blue Pontiac Aztek in the parking lot with someone sitting inside. The woman inside the Aztek began to honk the horn of the vehicle and the officer asked her to step out of the car as another woman ran out of the store yelling, "go, go, go," according to the police report.

As the driver stepped out of the car, the woman running out of the store slid behind the driver's wheel of the car and sped off, police said, nearly hitting the Saginaw Township police officer at the scene.

Saginaw Police Department officers caught up with the vehicle in Saginaw and continued the pursuit, briefly losing sight of the vehicle as it sped through residential neighborhoods until they spotted it crashed and smoking in the front yard of a home on the 3000 block of Fulton.

The woman had left the vehicle and a Michigan State Police trooper found her nearby.

The suspect, a 49-year-old Saginaw woman, was arrested at the scene and is expected to be charged with concealing stolen property and resisting and obstructing arrest in the city and with retail fraud and possession of stolen property for the incident in Saginaw Township.

The woman began to have a seizure while she was waiting in the back seat of the police car and was taken to a Saginaw hospital for treatment, Grauf said.

The other suspect, a 50-year-old woman, was released at Menards pending further investigation, Grauf said.

The woman also had several active warrants, Grauf said, including one for a parole violation in Lansing, a felony resisting/obstructing warrant from Rockford and a misdemeanor fraud warrant in Burton.

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