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Officer Manuel Fidel was searching the area of West Hudson Avenue in Englewood following the 5:22 p.m. crash Wednesday on Knickerbocker Road when an out-of-breath Michael D. Lockett approached his cruiser, Tenafly Police Chief Robert Chamberlain said.
“Upon reaching the patrol car, [Lockett] said he thought it was his Uber,” the chief said.
Realizing his mistake, the 28-year-old parolee began tipping away, ignoring Fidel’s orders to stop, Chamberlain said.
Then he bolted.
Lockett, a convicted burglar and drug dealer, was only just released this past October after separate state prison stretches of more than three combined years, records show.
His Bergen County rap sheet over the past decade also includes arrests for robbery, aggravated assault with a weapon, conspiracy, obstruction, hindering and resisting arrest.
Lockett ducked behind a nearby home Wednesday and then slipped through several backyards, Chamberlain said.
A Bergen County sheriff’s K-9 was summoned and police followed Lockett’s footprints in the snow before Officer Jason Heese found him hiding near a bush, the chief said.
They charged Lockett with resisting arrest and obstruction and sent to the Bergen County Jail to await a first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.
Chamberlain, meanwhile, praised his officers and dispatchers and thanked Englewood police and the sheriff’s office for their assistance.
He also said that Lockett could expect some summonses, as well.
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