A dispatch mix-up sent several southern Indiana agencies after an unmarked state police truck headed to a suspicious-device call.
AUSTIN, IN — A late-September emergency response in southern Indiana turned into a mistaken police chase when local officers pursued an Indiana State Police bomb squad truck, flattened one of its tires with stop sticks and handcuffed the trooper driving it before dispatchers realized he was headed to a bomb call.
The episode matters now because newly aired radio traffic and body camera details show how a breakdown between agencies can disrupt an urgent response, delay a bomb squad team and put armed officers face to face with another law enforcement officer who says he was already using lights and sirens. The truck’s driver, Trooper Rick Stockdale, was released after the mistake was cleared up, and no agency had announced discipline, charges or a formal bomb squad report in the case.
The chain of events began when an Austin police officer was assisting a stranded motorist near a gas station and saw an unmarked white truck with a camper shell pass by with emergency lights and sirens activated. The officer radioed that the vehicle was moving west and said nothing matching it appeared in the department’s computer system. Austin officers then asked Scott County dispatchers to check with Indiana State Police. Dispatchers came back with a message that shaped everything that followed: all state police units were said to be at a meeting at the post. With that, officers treated the truck as suspicious and began following it outside town. The pursuit moved north on Indiana 39, and more agencies joined in as the truck kept going toward what Stockdale later said was an emergency call. Over the radio, Stockdale could be heard asking his own dispatchers what Jackson County officers had because, as he put it, they were catching up to him while he was “running hot.”
As the pursuit continued, officers checked the truck’s license plate and learned it was tied to the Department of Administration in Indianapolis, an answer that added confusion instead of clearing it up. A dispatcher said the return only showed a fleet connection and did not explain the vehicle’s role. By then, Jackson County sheriff’s deputies and Brownstown police had joined Austin officers, and the group was preparing to force a stop. At a sharp right-hand curve, a Brownstown officer deployed stop sticks. The device tore into the front tire of the bomb squad truck and brought it to a stop. Officers stepped out with weapons drawn, ordered Stockdale from the vehicle and put him in handcuffs on the roadside. Stockdale immediately identified himself. “I’m a state police officer, bomb squad, going to a call,” he said, according to the recorded exchange. A deputy told him officers had already contacted state police and had been told nobody was supposed to be out. Stockdale answered that dispatch knew he was going.
The confusion began to unravel only after another state police dispatcher reached local authorities and said she had figured out the truck was one of their own units responding to a bomb call. The reaction on the radio was immediate. One Scott County dispatcher said, “OMG,” while another voice could be heard asking why earlier calls had not produced that answer. On the scene, officers realized the stop had hit the wrong target. One Austin officer apologized for what he called a “big mishap.” Another officer, stunned by what had just happened, said he had “spiked” a state trooper. Their explanation was that they believed the truck might have been stolen or that someone was impersonating an officer by using red and blue lights in an unmarked vehicle. That suspicion is significant because unmarked emergency vehicles can be harder for nearby agencies to identify on sight, especially when the registration return is tied to a state fleet office rather than a police unit. Even so, the central fact remained unchanged: the truck belonged to Indiana State Police, and the trooper inside was on an active call.
Trooper Mark Naylor later arrived to sort out the stop and speak with the officers involved. While that happened, Stockdale changed the damaged tire on his own truck at the roadside. He also pressed one point that he wanted included in the record. “Lights and sirens. They were on. That’s the biggest thing,” Stockdale said, telling an Austin officer to make sure the report reflected that. That detail goes to the heart of the dispute over whether enough warning signs existed to tell local officers the truck was not trying to evade police in the usual sense. Officers on scene said they had been working from the information they had at the time and were trying to stop what they feared could be a stolen emergency-style vehicle. Naylor, trying to calm the situation, said he was not trying to turn the mistake into a bigger mess than it already was. After the tire was changed, Stockdale left and continued to the original call with his emergency equipment on.
By the time he got there, the response had lost critical time. The bomb squad truck reached the scene about two hours after the suspicious device was first reported. Authorities later determined that the suspected pipe bomb was not an explosive device. The bomb squad did not file a report, leaving gaps in the public record about the original call, where exactly the suspicious item was found and what investigators concluded it actually was. Those unknowns matter because they keep the focus on the police misidentification rather than the threat that first sent the bomb squad into motion. They also leave open practical questions about how the delay affected the response and whether the call would have ended differently if the truck had reached the scene without interruption. No injuries were reported from the pursuit, the tire strike or the roadside detention. No agency said the trooper faced any wrongdoing. The only confirmed damage publicly described was the flattened tire on the bomb squad vehicle and the lost time during a high-priority response.
The broader issue is interagency communication in a region where city police, county deputies and state troopers may all be operating at once but not always on the same channels. After the stop, Jackson County Sheriff Rick Meyer said local agencies can hear local channels but cannot monitor everything at all times. Indiana State Police gave a similar explanation, saying it is not practical to listen continuously to every outside channel because doing so would overwhelm their own radio traffic. Neither side answered a key follow-up question: whether the agencies involved had a direct and reliable way to hail each other during the pursuit. That unresolved point may be the most important procedural question left behind. Once the truck was first identified as unusual, the next decisions were driven by assumptions made over radio checks and computer returns, not by direct confirmation with the trooper in the vehicle or a shared command channel that might have settled the issue faster. That is the kind of gap that can turn routine uncertainty into a dangerous stop.
The scene itself appears to have shifted quickly from urgency to disbelief. Officers who had approached with weapons drawn were now standing beside a fellow officer changing a tire. The radio traffic and body camera exchanges captured a mix of embarrassment, relief and frustration. Some officers tried to explain why they acted as they did. Stockdale, for his part, did not appear interested in escalating the roadside confrontation after the mistake was identified. He focused on getting back to the call and on making sure the record reflected that his emergency equipment had been operating. Naylor’s closing remark captured the mood after the misunderstanding had finally been cleared: “Let’s all get out of here and forget this mess.” But the episode is difficult to treat as a private embarrassment alone. It involved a multi-agency pursuit, a forced stop of a state police bomb squad truck and a delay to an emergency response built around a possible explosive device. Those facts make it more than a passing roadside mix-up.
As of Thursday, the case stood as a documented communication failure rather than a criminal matter, with no reported discipline, no announced outside review and no bomb squad report made public. The next milestone would be any formal statement or policy review from the agencies involved on how the mistaken pursuit began and whether radio procedures will change.
Author note: Last updated March 20, 2026.