A man allegedly posing as a police officer played a rolling game of cat-and-mouse on Twin Cities highways with a real cop. He was stopped and got out of his vehicle in Edina, but then quickly drove off to evade arrest, according to charges.
Luke Aaron Reuter, 47, of Inver Grove Heights, was charged in Hennepin County District Court with second-degree assault, fleeing police and impersonating an officer in connection with the incident Thursday that spanned several miles.
Reuter, who also has gone by Luke Eischen, was arrested and jailed that same night. He has since been released on bail and is due in court on Nov. 4.
In a phone call and an email Wednesday to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Reuter said the allegations “are 100% made up.”
He explained that he was starting his day delivering packages in his own vehicle that had Amazon signs affixed, when a driver he didn’t know at the time was a police officer “cut right in front of me.”
Reuter insisted that “at no point did I flee from law enforcement, commit a crime or endanger anyone. My actions [suggesting the portrayal of an officer] were solely to document and report a person whose behavior on the road caused me concern for my safety and the safety of others.”
Investigators say that posing as an officer was used one night in mid-June when Vance Boelter allegedly knocked on the doors of two Twin Cities-area state legislators and killed House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and seriously wounded Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.
Boelter, 58, who founded a security company with cars and weapons but had no clients, was wearing a convincing police disguise, including a Taser, badge and black body armor, according to charges. Boelter was driving a dark SUV outfitted with emergency lights and opened fire on police officers when they found him at Hortman’s Brooklyn Park home, investigators say. He was arrested the next night and charged with murder and attempted murder.
