A 24-year-old motorist made southwestern Minnesota his own personal drag strip and was pulled over five times on the same night at speeds ranging up to 115 miles per hour, with four of those stops coming within an hour, according to authorities.
"If you feel the need for speed, we feel the need to ticket you … it's that simple," read the State Patrol's posting on Facebook that referenced three of the stops made in the first hour of Feb. 16.
Shedrick Cooper of Sioux Falls offered a range of reasons for why he was zipping around the sparsely populated southwestern corner of the state in his Audi A6, according to the citations filed with courthouses in Lyon, Pipestone and Rock counties.
"Very casual, with no reason for it," was how trooper Andrew Larsen's citation characterized Cooper's demeanor after stopping him at 12:22 a.m. on Hwy. 23 in Eden Township for going 115 mph in a 60 mph zone. "Like it was no big deal."
Patrol Sgt. Troy Christianson took exception to that attitude, pointing out Wednesday that "speeding is one of the leading causes of traffic fatalities on Minnesota roads. In the last five years [2014-2018], 462 people have been killed in speed-related traffic crashes."
And if Larsen needed more evidence of such disregard for speed limits, the trooper who ticketed and sent Cooper on his way looked up a short time later only to see him "traveling at a high rate of speed," read his note on the subsequent ticket for going 94 mph. "Driver had no reason for speeding again … and denied the speed."
Cooper's tickets spell out the pattern of acceleration on Feb. 15-16 that cut a diagonal 135-mile path south toward Sioux Falls:
• 7:19 p.m.: 70 mph in a 60 mph zone at Hwy. 23 and Lyon County Road in Cottonwood County. Radar had him going 82. Said he was going to a friend's house.