This ain't no Hazzard County. And Boss Hogg, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane and the Duke boys are more than a few county lines away from the south end of Salt Lake Valley.
Don't tell that to David and Merilee Ibarra, whose backyard early Sunday could have easily been mistaken for a Hollywood stunt set from the car-chase-heavy "Dukes of Hazzard" TV series of some 20 years ago.There were even accompanying strains of music, but it wasn't from Waylon Jennings, who narrated the TV show.
The trouble began in Kearns about 1 a.m. Sunday when Salt Lake County sheriff's deputy John Timpson spotted a man in a truck making an illegal turn. He followed the man, checked the vehicle's license plates and discovered it was stolen.
A chase began after the man refused to stop, and the suspect busted through a fence and into the backyard of the Ibarras' $400,000 dream home on Spruce Grove Way.
The alleged car thief somehow jumped the pickup truck over part of a 32-by-10-foot swimming pool, careened into another fence and stalled some 100 yards later in the middle of an adjacent field.
Timpson, with just nine months on the force, entered the backyard - lights and sirens still flashing.
His luck was not as good as the suspect's, as he ended up diving his 1997 Crown Victoria nose-first into one end of the 8-foot-deep pool.
"My wife let out a holler that something happened," David Ibarra said Monday. "She ran to the bedroom window, looked out and said, `Oh, my heavens, there's a car in my pool.' "
David Ibarra ran outside to a strange scene of red and blue police lights flashing from the middle of the pool, pieces of fence scattered over his yard and heavy-metal music blaring from the speakers of a truck stuck in the field near his house.
"It was just bizarre," he said. "Then I thought, `Someone is probably still in the car,' because I didn't see anybody around."
As Ibarra prepared to enter the pool, he saw the submerged rookie work the driver's side window and then swim to the top.
"I gasped," Ibarra said.
Ibarra knew the officer was OK after hearing Timpson utter "a few choice expressions" as he came to the surface.
Timpson was shaken, Ibarra said, and was slightly injured when the police cruiser's air bag deployed on contact with the water.
A backup officer arrived and radioed for help. Ibarra estimated some 30 cars and a helicopter then quickly showed up at the home, 9877 S. Spruce Grove Way (2060 West).
The suspect, who had since fled on foot to a nearby canal, was found a couple of hours later by canine units. He was arrested and booked into jail.
The 27-year-old suspect apparently submerged himself in the canal and was breathing through a straw, "like a Rambo-type guy," Ibarra said police told him.
Retrieving the police car from the fiberglass pool was another matter. But everyone seemed good-natured about it.
"Eventually, they get this big 45-ton tow truck that has a crane on one end," Ibarra said. "As they're pulling it out, it comes up, back end first, hanging out like a freshly caught marlin. My boys ended up diving for debris and this morning have the grill and other parts in their bedroom with a sign that reads: `You wouldn't believe what happened.'
"Then we see the officers standing next to `the catch,' and they're trying to get (Timpson) to smile," Ibarra added. "We also gave him a toy police boat, like the shore patrol, and he carried it around for a while."
Unbelievably, Ibarra said, the pool itself did not appear seriously damaged.
And through it all, he said he wasn't going to second-guess the officer who pursued the man through his backyard.
"I'm very happy to have the sheriff's department there," he said. "In light of all the crime going on, even if my property gets damaged in the way, I'm not going to second-guess an officer in pursuit. What could have happened if that guy went on a worse rampage?"
Ibarra, a general manager at Henry Day Ford, said the family moved from Kearns to South Jordan "thinking, `What could ever happen here?' Then all of a sudden we have a visitor with us from Kearns."
Salt Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Potter said an internal review board will investigate the mishap.
"(Timpson's) got a long road ahead of him," Potter said, laughing. "He'll be fine. He'll get his share of grief, but he does have some questions to answer."