Man leads police on chase through corn maze
A Sonoma County man suspected of stalking his former girlfriend fled police by running into one of Northern California’s largest corn mazes over the weekend, eluding them for nearly two hours in the Halloween attraction before he finally was arrested.
Six officers from the Petaluma Police Department entered the Petaluma Pumpkin Patch corn maze, a massive agricultural labyrinth 4 acres in size with dense cornstalks up to 10 feet high. They were searching for Ryan Kenneth Watt, 29, a Petaluma transient who was suspected of violating a restraining order to harass a former girlfriend the night before, and who had run across Highway 101 when officers came asking about him Saturday morning at a homeless encampment.
“I’ve been to that maze myself, off duty with kids,” said Lt. Ed Crosby of the Petaluma Police Department. “It’s a great place to hide. It’s very narrow. It takes a long time to get through it.”
After Watt survived his sprint across the freeway, he ran onto the farm’s property and past the pumpkin patch, a major draw with Halloween coming up, and then ducked into the corn maze.
Worried about getting lost in the complex maze, the officers in chase asked for maps from the farm’s employees. The maps are for visitors, who normally pay $7 each to enter the maze and regularly take as long as 45 minutes to successfully find their way out.
This time, two teams of three officers wandered in, guns drawn, from different entrances looking for Watt. Four other Petaluma officers and two California Highway Patrol officers set up a perimeter around the cornfield, while a CHP airplane circled overhead.
The pumpkin patch, in the 400 block of Stony Point Road, is a popular Halloween attraction in Sonoma County. It has drawn raves from Reader’s Digest magazine and other publications as one of the nation’s best mazes. Because the search happened shortly after 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, the facility wasn’t yet open to visitors.
After searching for nearly two hours, officers still couldn’t find Watt. They were ready to give up.
“We worked our way methodically through it,” Crosby said. “We covered the whole maze. We couldn’t find him. The aircraft didn’t see any movement. We were getting ready to close it down. Then one of our guys noticed the chicken coop.”
About 20 feet from the edge of the maze was a chicken coop. That’s not unusual for a farm in Petaluma, which a century ago was known as the “Egg Basket of the World” for its extensive chicken farms.
“One of our officers kicked the door in, and there he was,” Crosby said.
Unable to fly the coop, Watt was arrested without further incident on suspicion of violating a restraining order, resisting officers performing their duties and several other charges.
“We think he hunkered down in the maze and then ran out into the coop,” Crosby said.
Police said Watt is the subject of a stalking investigation against a former girlfriend, documented in five previous cases this month, which led to him being arrested three times. Investigators say he showed up at the victim’s home and at her son’s school athletic practices uninvited, hacked her social media accounts, and is suspected of placing a GPS tracking device on her car.
Watt was booked into Sonoma County Jail on Saturday afternoon with a bail of $250,000.
The corn maze and pumpkin patch opened to visitors a few hours late Saturday. They remain open daily through Halloween.