Indiana Man Steals Bud Light Truck, Rams Patrol Car During Two-County Chase

Deputy Jared Zwilling had just set a strip of stop sticks on State Road 165 and stepped back when Randall Baker, steering a stolen Bud Light semi-truck at speed, veered deliberately toward him and obliterated his patrol car. The Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office released Zwilling's body camera footage shortly after the March 27, 2025 incident, and it spread across the country within days, turning a two-county Indiana chase into a national story about how law enforcement handles the increasingly dangerous problem of commercial vehicle theft.

Baker, 41, of Evansville, Indiana, allegedly took the Anheuser-Busch delivery semi from a liquor store near the 2400 block of North Governor Street, not far from the University of Evansville, at approximately 3:07 p.m. Deputies spotted the truck traveling westbound on Diamond Avenue near Resurrection Drive and attempted a traffic stop. Baker refused and kept driving, pulling the pursuit west toward Wadesville and then north toward Poseyville, crossing from Vanderburgh County into neighboring Posey County before the chase ended on State Road 165.

When Zwilling stepped out to deploy stop sticks, Baker turned the loaded semi directly at him. Zwilling got clear; his patrol car did not. The truck struck the cruiser, causing extensive damage, before careening off the roadway and coming to rest in a field. Baker then refused to exit the cab, and deputies deployed pepperball rounds to force him out. He was transported to a hospital for minor injuries. His blood alcohol content registered at 0.103, above Indiana's legal limit of 0.08. He was booked into the Vanderburgh County Jail on six charges: attempted murder, auto theft, criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon, resisting law enforcement, reckless operation of a tractor-trailer, and driving while intoxicated.

Zwilling, reflecting on the body cam footage, acknowledged how close the situation came to a different outcome. "When I was playing it back in my head, I thought I was a lot further away, but when I watched the video, I was pretty close... 10 yards maybe," he said. He later told his mother he was unharmed after she pressed him repeatedly: "I don't think I'd be here if I was in the car." Despite the gravity of the moment, Zwilling was candid about the occupational novelty of the call: "Chasing a stolen Bud Light truck is unique. It is kind of why you sign up to be a police officer I think. I usually say foot pursuits are the Super Bowl of policing, but chasing a stolen Bud Light truck is definitely up there."

The footage's reach extended further after Nashville-based country band Tailgate Revival shared a fan-captured surveillance clip on social media showing approximately six patrol cars trailing the semi through Evansville-area streets. The video illustrated both the scale of the law enforcement response and the core tactical challenge officers face when a pursuit involves a commercial tractor-trailer: stop sticks are the standard first-line intervention, but a semi carrying full weight can shrug off a tire deflation long enough to put officers and bystanders in serious danger, and physically blocking the vehicle with a patrol car risks catastrophic results.

The Baker case fits a worsening national pattern. According to cargo intelligence firm CargoNet, semi-tractor thefts in the first quarter of 2025 totaled 135 units, a 38 percent increase from the same period in 2024. Cargo theft incidents across North America reached 3,625 in 2024, a 27 percent year-over-year increase, with losses exceeding $455 million. Fleet security analysts point to GPS-based real-time tracking, remote ignition disable systems, and tow-detection alerts as the most effective deterrents, tools that allow fleet operators to pinpoint a stolen vehicle's location within minutes and feed that data directly to law enforcement before a chase develops. A truck that cannot be started without a key fob paired to a driver's identity, or that triggers an automatic alert when it leaves a geofenced route, significantly narrows the window a would-be thief has to operate.

The attempted murder charge in Baker's case reflects how Indiana prosecutors treat the use of a vehicle as a weapon against an officer, a charging posture courts across the state have applied consistently when defendants steer toward law enforcement rather than simply flee. With six charges now pending and the investigation continuing, Baker's case will test how aggressively Vanderburgh County pursues the full weight of those counts at trial.