stock_MPD cruiser (copy)

A Cave Junction man was arrested in Central Point Saturday after he reportedly led police on a drunken car chase and tried to choke a sheriff’s deputy who ran him down in a foot chase.

Jordan Aaron Mitchell Cook, 23, was lodged in the Jackson County Jail without bail on 17 charges, including reckless driving, endangerment, driving under the influence of alcohol, attempting to elude police by vehicle and foot, assault of a police officer, felony strangulation and resisting arrest. Cook was also charged with kidnapping. Two female passengers were with him in the car, but he did not let them go despite their requests, police said.

The incident began when a Medford police officer saw Cook drive in the median past several other cars and run a red light at the intersection of East Main Street and Hawthorne Street. The MPD officer, Zach Mailand, tried to pull Cook over near the intersection of East Main Street and Riverside Avenue, but Cook drove off, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case.

At one point Cook allegedly almost struck the officer’s patrol car when the officer tried to block Cook from leaving the parking lot of Options for Southern Oregon on Central Avenue.

Cook continued north on Biddle Road, where Central Point police tried to stop Cook, according to Mailand. Cook made it to the area of Colonial Way and Old Stage Road, and a precision immobilization technique was executed by sheriff’s deputies, causing Cook’s car to roll backwards into a ditch.

Cook then fled on foot, and sheriff’s Deputy Anthony Russell followed Cook, who hopped a fence into a pasture. In a probable cause affidavit, Russell wrote that the two ran for a bit, but when Cook realized he could not outrun the deputy, the suspect turned and punched the deputy in the right cheekbone. Cook got the deputy into a “guillotine” chokehold, Russell reported, but the officer was able to escape and put Cook on his stomach for arrest.

“The suspect continued to yell, ‘This ain’t my first rodeo,’” Cook was reported as saying, before Russell read him his Miranda rights.

Cook allegedly had alcohol on his breath and admitted to drinking alcohol, but denied driving the car, Mailand wrote in an affidavit.

One of the two female passengers in Cook’s car, who did not appear injured, told police that Cook began driving recklessly through Medford and she was afraid that she would be hurt, Russell wrote. The woman said that when she asked Cook if she could leave, he screamed and told them he knew how to drive.

Cook was taken to the hospital for a blood-alcohol sample before he was lodged in jail. Cook remained in jail throughout the weekend and was arraigned Monday. On Monday afternoon he was being held without bail.