Minneapolis man, 43, fled into woods during 2020 traffic stop and was never seen again
Jami Lucas, who would now be age 43, vanished without a trace on July 3, 2020, when the local sheriff tried to pull him over in Outing, Minnesota.
Lucas was riding a motorbike, and Cass County Sheriff Bryan Welk said he recognized him as an unlicensed driver and tried to pull him over just before sunset.
Welk pursued him down Highway 6 and a winding dirt road. Lucas eventually gave up the chase by abandoning his motorcycle and sprinting into the woods.
The sheriff said he drew his gun and shouted at Lucas to stop running - but he disappeared into the foliage. Five years later, he still hasn't been seen.
'Where the hell is he?' Welk said in a recent interview with the Star Tribune.
Lucas' family have criticized the sheriff's handling of the traffic stop, claiming that he shouldn't have initiated a high speed chase over a minor incident.
The father-of-three is known to police with a lengthy rap sheet. They would have known where to find him and didn't need to chase him, his family have argued.
His mother, Sandy Lucas, also thinks that the deputies, or even her own relatives, may have been responsible for her son's disappearance.
'They're all crooked,' she said of the police department. In an interview with the Star Tribune, the heartbroken mother added that she believes her son is dead.
Sandy said one of Lucas' relatives is in prison, and local media could not reach his ex-girlfriend, or the children they share together.
His mother's suspicions were bolstered by a more recent discovery that there was a sixth deputy at the scene of Lucas' disappearance who never filed a report, unlike the other five.
The sixth was Lucas' cousin, deputy Aaron Ammerman.
Welk said Ammerman was riding with the squad when they saw Lucas on his motorcycle, and he radioed to other deputies asking them to pull him over.
Sandy said she is suspicious of both Ammerman and Welk. Ammerman has denied any wrongdoing.
'I didn't do anything in that call,' Ammerman told the Star Tribune of his cousin's disappearance on the Fourth of July weekend.
'By the time we got there he was already gone in the woods… We didn't stay there the whole time because we had to be out on the water for the fireworks display that night.'
Ammerman added that Lucas' immediate relatives are 'a family of conspiracy people' and should not be taken seriously.
The sheriff's office and Cass County Attorney Ben Lindstrom have said the tragedy was sparked by Lucas' decision to flee law enforcement that fateful evening.
'We certainly want to see people reconnected and have finality, but I guess what I've seen is attacks on law enforcement suggesting that this is their fault that somebody ran from them, and I think that's misplaced,' Lindstrom told the Star Tribune.
He added that there are no suspects in the case, and no evidence of foul play.
Law enforcement issued a nationwide arrest warrant after Lucas went missing and failed to check in with his probation officer.
'Holding him accountable for the criminal cases are secondary,' Welk told the Star Tribune. 'We need to find him; that's the first and foremost.'
But searches of the area by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and sheriff's office have only drawn more blanks.
Welk said they combed the area at the time of the disappearance, and again this summer, using ATVs, dogs, and drones.
He said the first search was cursory because deputies did not consider Lucas to be a missing person case, but rather evading law enforcement.
However, his family has slammed police for failing to issue a missing persons bulletin for Lucas until December 2024 after they filed a misconduct complaint.
The family is working with a private investigator to find Lucas, and his mother Sandy has placed a memorial cross adorned with flowers at the site where he disappeared.
'I just want to find my son's remains,' she told the Star Tribune.
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