Troubled siblings on a brief but dramatic cross-country spree that police say included car chases, two shootouts and a bank robbery were arrested Wednesday in southern Colorado after they crashed their car.
The two brothers and their older sister, who became known as the "Dougherty Gang," had been on the lam for a week and had traveled from Pasco County on Florida's west coast.
The odyssey began Aug. 2 when Ryan Dougherty, 21, Lee-Grace Dougherty, 29, and Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, fired at least 20 shots at Zephyrhills, Fla., police officer Kevin Widner, who had tried to stop them for speeding, police said. Widner was uninjured; the other car got away when a shot flattened a tire on his patrol car.
The day before, Ryan Dougherty had been convicted in Volusia County of a sex offense involving a child and had texted his mother, "There's a time for all of us to die," according to police.
The siblings again fired on police during the 20-mile, high-speed chase that led to their capture Wednesday, Colorado State Patrol Trooper Heather Cobler said.
"They were dead set on getting away," Cobler said.
Police said the trio, wearing masks, robbed a bank in Valdosta, Ga., 210 miles north of Zephyrhills, several hours after the Aug. 2 chase. Witnesses told police the robbers fired shots into the ceiling and instructed customers to lie on the floor. Security cameras show one robber with an assault rifle, another with a machine pistol, the FBI said.
Following the shooting in Florida, the FBI and local police "put on a pretty aggressive public affairs campaign" that reached out to the public and law enforcement agencies across the country, FBI Special Agent Stephen Emmett said Wednesday.
The FBI activated the Outdoor Advertising Association of America's alert system, which put the siblings' photographs on hundreds of billboards throughout the Southeast.
Employees at an outdoors store in Colorado Springs, told police the siblings purchased a tent on Tuesday afternoon.
A retired wildlife officer spotted the fugitives' car at a campground near Colorado City and called police at 9:02 a.m., according to a Colorado State Patrol news release. A Pueblo County Sheriff's deputy on his way to the campground spotted the car at a convenience store.
The siblings fled, police said.
In a 20-mile chase down Interstate 25, police said, the car's occupants fired at the troopers. The patrol set up "stop sticks," Teflon-coated quills that puncture tires, on the highway, which caused the car to crash and jump a guardrail near Walsenburg, Colo.
Huerfano County sheriff's deputies arrested the sister and one brother. The other brother ran away but was captured in Walsenburg. All three were treated for minor injuries at a hospital, police said.
Ryan Dougherty's long criminal record includes 14 felonies stretching back to 2007. He has been convicted of several burglaries, drug possession, destroying evidence and a hit-and-run, plus probation violations.
On Aug. 1, Florida added him to its registry of sex offenders after he was convicted of sending explicit text messages to a child. He was sentenced to wear an electronic monitor with a tracking device on his ankle for two years. Police say he cut the ankle bracelet off at 6:59 a.m. Aug. 2, 13 minutes before the car chase and shooting in Florida.
Police said he was last living with his pregnant girlfiend and Stanley, his older brother, in Lacoochee, Fla.
Lee-Grace Dougherty, the sister, has five felony charges and six misdemeanors on her record. Most recently, she was charged in two car crashes in Brevard County, Fla. She blamed her behavior on painkillers, according to an FBI profile of the suspects.
On May 7 near Cocoa Beach, Fla., she crashed a Ford Mustang while speeding, police said. She kicked, punched and tried to bite the deputy trying to arrest her for driving under the influence, court documents say.
Ten days later, troopers said, Dougherty crashed a Chevrolet Impala into a pickup on Merritt Island and fled. When troopers caught her and placed her in a patrol car, she rolled down the windows and stripped to her bra, complaining she was hot. Then she wrapped a seat belt around her neck and pulled it tight before a trooper stopped her, police said. "My mother doesn't love me anymore," she said, according to the arrest report. "I'm gonna kill myself."
She had been living with her boyfriend at his parents' house in Merritt Island and working occasionally as an exotic dancer at Cheaters Gentlemen's Club in Cocoa Beach. She had recently pleaded guilty to the DUI charge and was on probation.
Flickr, a photo-sharing website, has photos of her in a bikini. "I have a huge, crazy family," says a posting under her name. "I'm 28 but act like I'm 17 most of the time. I love to farm and shoot guys and wreck cars. I'm a redneck and proud of it. I like milk and German engineering and causing mayhem with my siblings."
"She was a lot of fun to be around and talk to," said Darryl Bookman, 66, the father of Dougherty's boyfriend. "She just didn't come across to me as the kind of person they're portraying her as."
He last saw her on Aug. 1.
"I'm sure she was involved in that shootout and probably in that bank robbery," he said. "But I would have never seen that coming."
Contributing: Andrew Knapp and J.D. Gallop of Florida Today
