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The man accused of murdering a Bangor woman earlier this week was arrested on Friday in Massachusetts after a car chase in a stolen vehicle that prompted shelter-in-place orders at several schools, according to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, police.
Richard Keith Thorpe, 42, of Bangor was charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend Virginia Cookson, 39, also of Bangor, who was found dead in a home on Larkin Street in Bangor Wednesday morning.
The Maine medical examiner’s office in Augusta ruled her death a homicide on Thursday and law enforcement subsequently issued a warrant for Thorpe’s arrest.
On Friday just before 4 a.m., officers with the Pittsfield Police Department were called to a single vehicle crash, the department said in a Facebook post. When they arrived, the vehicle was unoccupied but items inside led officers to believe that the driver may have been Thorpe.
Police searched the area but could not find the driver.
Later in the morning, at about 7 a.m., Pittsfield police responded to a report of a stolen vehicle. At about 8:30 a.m., police found the vehicle and the driver, later identified as Thorpe, led officers on a chase, crossing the center divider and passing cars in a no-passing zone.
Police said Thorpe’s vehicle stopped after making contact with a police cruiser. No injuries were reported. The department previously said the chase ended after Thorpe tried to flee down a dead-end street.
Police arrested Thorpe and charged him with multiple motor vehicle offenses in addition to the Maine murder warrant.
Thorpe will be extradited and is expected to arrive in Bangor by Saturday, Sgt. Jason McAmbley, a spokesperson for the Bangor Police Department, announced in a press conference on Friday.
The Maine attorney general’s office intends to charge Thorpe with depraved indifference murder, McAmbley said. No arraignment or court date for Thorpe had been set as of Friday afternoon.
The department said Neither Thorpe nor Cookson are known to have any connection to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. And they had not been named in documented calls for service before the chase on Friday.
Local schools were asked to shelter in place, police said, and Taconic High School was locked down briefly because of its proximity to the incident. A previous post from the Pittsfield Police Department indicated that the chase went by an elementary school.
“We understand how frightening this may have been to parents and children going to and from Crosby [Elementary School], but based on the subject’s charges out of state we believed we needed to do everything in our power to apprehend him,” the department wrote on Facebook.
