Driver leads police on 9-hour hunt after fatal crash

RINGO FORD, Mo. -- A parole absconder suspected of fleeing from a fatal crash on Highway 160 is in jail after he allegedly led officers on a nearly nine-hour search.

About 9:10 a.m. Tuesday, Michael John Hinsa, 46, of the 2400 block of Roxie Road, allegedly was driving a 2005 Ford Van west on Highway 160 two miles east of Fairdealing, Missouri, when it crossed the centerline and struck a 1999 Cadillac head-on, according to a Missouri State Highway Patrol report.

The other driver, Pal R. Hodo, 67, of Doniphan, Missouri, suffered minor injuries and was taken by ambulance to Southeast Health of Ripley County in Doniphan for treatment.

Hodo's passenger, Timothy A. Martin, had to be extricated from the car by Butler County firefighters. The 58-year-old Doniphan man was taken by ambulance to Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9:56 a.m.

Traffic on Highway 160 was blocked for more than two hours as troopers and members of the Major Crash Investigation Team processed the scene and investigated the crash. It would reopen at 11:33 a.m.

Information led officers to believe Hinsa, who allegedly fled on foot after the crash, had been driving the van.

"I know four or five of our troopers were going house to house over there," said Sgt. Clark Parrott, Troop E's public information officer. "We got a report he was on M Highway in Ripley County. We got a tip he was in a vehicle. Troopers attempted to stop it; he bailed again and then fled into the woods."

Troopers, Parrott said, were "pretty close" behind Hinsa when he allegedly ran.

With assistance from deputies in Butler and Ripley counties, Parrott said, a perimeter prevented Hinsa from leaving the woods.

"It was not a huge, wide net [to search]" but a patch of woods, Parrott said.

A helicopter was brought in to conduct an aerial search, and canines assisted in ground searches, said Parrott, who indicated the search concentrated in a three- to five-mile area from the crash site.

Hinsa, he said, was found in a shed and arrested without incident on suspicion of leaving the scene of an accident involving a fatality, failure to drive on the right half of the road, displaying plates of another and no insurance.

Hinsa also was arrested on a warrant for absconding from supervision, a Butler County warrant for second-degree assault on a law enforcement officer and a Ripley County warrant for second-degree burglary, theft/stealing and misdemeanor property damage.

Investigators, Parrott said, are trying to figure out how Hinsa "acquired another vehicle."

Hinsa was booked at the Butler County Jail, where he is being held without bond on the absconder warrant.