Man pretends to be his own “Insurance Store” during traffic stop: JPD

JONESBORO, Ark. – During a Thursday traffic stop in Jonesboro, a man reportedly pretended to be his own insurance agent and answered the phone “Insurance Store” when the officer behind him called to check his policy.

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Thursday, October 26, Jonesboro Police Department Officer David Stout was running stationary radar speed checks at North Church and Thomas Green Road. At about 9:13 a.m., the incident report said he saw a beige GMC truck speeding toward his area. It was going 57 miles per hour in a 45 MPH zone. Stout began a traffic stop, getting the vehicle to pull over on Magnolia Street.

Once he called in the stop, the officer made contact with the driver – Shane Lucas Hight, 42, of Bono.

“He said that he had to exit the truck to get his license out of his wallet for me,” Stout reported. “Once he did that, he began looking for the other items that I had requested. He eventually handed me an official looking insurance paper but said that he couldn’t find his registration. I then asked him why there were no tags on the trailer. He stated that he had recently purchased it last weekend and hadn’t gotten it registered yet. He said that he didn’t have any paperwork on it to prove his story on the purchase date. I took the papers to my patrol car to run on my in-car ACIC computer.”

The vehicle returned with no insurance policies in effect, Stout said. He called the phone number on the insurance paper and placed it on speakerphone while continuing to do paperwork for the stop. What happened next was written, verbatim, in the police report.

“A male answered the phone and said ‘INSURANCE STORE,'” Stout wrote. “I immediately recognized the voice as being Arrestee #1 (Hight, Shane Lucas) and said ‘I’m sorry, this is who?’ He answered again, ‘INSURANCE STORE.” I looked up at him and could see in the side, rear-view mirror that he was holding a phone next to his ear.”

Stout went along with the act to see how far the suspect would go.

“I told the person on the phone that I needed to check insurance coverage on someone,” Stout reported. “He told me to ‘HOLD ON A SECOND’ and paused. I watched him the whole time and he came back asked ‘WHAT’S THE NAME?’ I immediately exited my patrol car to go and confront him about the stunt and he hung up the phone on me. I walked up to him and told him that he had just worked himself into multiple tickets with that stunt. He can plainly be heard on the phone on my in-car microphone.”

Hight was cited for speeding 57/45, no vehicle tags for the trailer, obstruction of governmental operations for the forged insurance paperwork and falsely acting as an insurance agent and no proof of liability insurance, the report said. He was given a court date of November 22, 2017 and released from the scene.

The “insurance paperwork” was seized and entered into evidence.

I walked up to him and told him that he had just worked himself into multiple tickets with that stunt. – David Stout, JPD