Jessica Sterling: ‘Houdini Suspect’ Escapes Impossible Restraints, Steals Police Cruiser [Video]

Jessica Sterling, a 23-year-old Greenwood, Arkansas, woman, is being compared to Houdini tonight after video surfaced of her stealing a police cruiser against some pretty stacked odds.

As you can see above, Greenwood Police had the suspect hog-tied, except instead of using ropes, officers used the added security of handcuffs, leg irons, and a hobble.

Did that stop her? Nope.

Sterling had wrecked her car in a high-speed chase following a domestic disturbance, authorities said. When they arrived at her car to make the arrest, she fled the vehicle, head butting one of the officers in the process.

They managed to wrestle her to the ground and apply what they thought would be the necessary restraints before placing her in the back of the police cruiser.

Thinking they had earned themselves enough time to search the vehicle, they began to do just that. But Jessica Sterling managed to use that time to her own advantage, wriggling her hands out of the restraints somehow and bringing her hands around her back and in front of her.

(Yeah, no one’s quite sure how she did that either. The news report from 5NEWS was pretty vague on the “how” part, probably because they don’t know either.)

Once Sterling had her hands in front of her, police say, she managed to crawl through a window dividing the front and back seats and gain access to the driver’s seat.

In the body cam footage, police look up, taken aback by the fact that the woman was stealing their cruiser. They radioed ahead and the chase was on.

Sterling managed to wreck the cruiser, too, turning it over on its side. When officers approached the vehicle, she was reaching for a rifle inside.

“We’ve got one tased,” an officer can be heard saying on the video of the incident.

Sterling reportedly will face 15 charges for the incident, including DWI, criminal mischief, and theft of property.

You can check out the full video at this link. Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time the Inquisitr has brought you a story like this in 2015. In January, there was the case of Roxanne Rimer, who was handcuffed when she stole a Center Township, Pennsylvania, police car.

What made that story remarkable is that Rimer was able to conduct a police chase while her hands were still behind her back. She didn’t have the level of restraints the Houdini suspect did, though.

So on that note, when you figure out how Jessica Sterling managed to pull this off, leave a description in the comments section.

[Images of Jessica Sterling via 5NEWS, linked above]