Yesterday morning's arrest of the Dougherty gang was just as wild as the crime spree that precipitated the trio's cross-country sprint. It involved a car chase, a flipped car and the shooting of Lee Grace Dougherty, the proud redneck and ex-stripper whose skanky bikini photos have become Internet sensations.
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| Ryan Dougherty (click to enlarge). |
As we've reported, Ryan Edward Dougherty isn't exactly a stranger to law enforcement, with a fourteen felony arrests prior to his latest one. Lee had five of her own, including hit and run, and she wasn't exactly apologetic for her behavior. On her Flickr profile (the source of those bikini shots, on view below), she declared that she loved to "shoot guys and wreck cars," not to mention "causing mayhem with my siblings." She called herself "redneck and proud of it." All of this made Dylan a relative angel by comparison -- although not anymore.
Speculation about the trio's latest one-family crime wave centers on Ryan being required to register as a sex offender for sending explicit text messages to an eleven-year-old girl -- which gains in creepiness considering he's about to become a dad. He's been involved in a relationship with a woman who calls herself Allie O'Love on her Facebook page. Her current profile picture features her in a cozy pose with Ryan:
Allie's due to give birth in January, but Ryan might not have been allowed to see the child given his sex-offender status. Not that access will be easy given what happened next. According to the FBI, the Doughertys led a police officer on a chase near Zephryhills, Florida on August 2, firing shots that eventually disabled the vehicle. Then, only hours later, they're thought to have knocked off a bank in Valdosta, Georgia, firing shots at the ceiling with automatic weapons.
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| Dylan Dougherty Stanley (click to enlarge). |
Then they hit the road and headed west -- to the Colorado Springs area, where witnesses at an REI store spotted them buying a tent, leading to speculation that they were going to camp out in the mountains until the heat died down. Instead, the subsequent reports brought the situation to a boil. Yesterday just past 9 a.m., according to the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office, members of the department, as well as troopers with the Colorado State Patrol, received a report about a suspicious vehicle -- namely the white Subaru Impreza the Doughertys had last been seen driving.
Deputies from Pueblo and several neighboring counties quickly responded, and a detective soon spotted the car. The Doughertys apparently noticed, because they high-tailed it south on Interstate 25 toward Walsenburg, leading a pursuit that exceeded 100 miles per hour. The PCSO reports that shots were fired during the chase.
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| Lee Grace Dougherty (click to enlarge). |
The end came around Mile Marker 52, when the Subaru hit some stop sticks arranged by authorities and flipped over a guardrail. One of the boys was injured in the crash and couldn't flee, while the other was rounded up shortly thereafter. Lee, for her part, tried to escape into a ditch, armed with an automatic weapon. After she ignored orders to drop it, the cops shot her. The wound is described as non-life threatening. Likely charges in Colorado include attempted murder of law-enforcement officers, first-degree assault and loads o' traffic offenses. And that's not to mention the offenses allegedly committed in Florida and Georgia.
The made-for-movies chaos wreaked by the Doughertys in recent days is bringing even more attention to those photos of Lee. Check out a sampling below, featuring sample comments that have accrued in recent days on her Flickr account.
