Trying to avoid a trial date, Jada Coover led Iowa police on a high-speed chase Wednesday after his pickup was spotted on State Highway 50. Coover fled down the highway, then into the town of Vermillion, where he stopped the truck in the middle of the street, backed into a retaining wall, jumped out, ran into the nearest building and barricaded himself inside a room.

The building was the county courthouse and the room was the same courtroom where, as it happened, Coover had been scheduled to appear right about then to be tried on charges relating to methamphetamine. The judge had just given up on Coover’s appearance and had dismissed the jurors, who were filing out of the courtroom as the defendant burst in.

“Typically the pursuits don’t come right to us as this one did,” said Clay County Sheriff Andy Howe. Howe said many of the officers involved in the pursuit had been at the courthouse in the first place, left to assist in the pursuit, and ended up back where they had started.