Police chase that caused school lockdowns led to Iowa sex offender, State Street burglary suspect

The police chase that led to lockdowns at Isidore Newman School and Lusher Charter School’s Freret campus on Thursday ended with the arrest of a wanted sex offender from Iowa who was also a suspect in a break-in earlier this week on State Street, New Orleans police said.

Austin Taets, 22, was already “wanted on a felony charge in Iowa,” and probation and parole officials there contacted the New Orleans police to notify them that Taets was in the area around noon Thursday, Sept. 29, according to a NOPD news release. NOPD Second District officers and a police dog tracked Taets to the intersection of Octavia Street and Loyola Avenue, but he ran off toward Jefferson Avenue, the report states.

Police set up a search perimeter around the 1900 block of Jefferson Avenue, causing both Newman and Lusher to go into lockdown, according to reports. A police dog found Taets in the yard of a home in the 1900 block of Octavia Street, and he was arrested by shortly after 2 p.m., the reports state.

Taets was subsequently identified as the suspect caught on surveillance camera in a home burglary early Tuesday in the 1700 block of State Street, the report states.

According to the Iowa Sex Offender Registry, Taets was convicted in Scott County in October 2015 of a charge of assault with the intent to commit sexual abuse on an adult woman. He also made news in Moline, Iowa, in 2014 when he was arrested for allegedly “driving around the city shooting out windows with a BB gun and causing other damage to property,” according to a local TV station.

Taets is charged with simple burglary, criminal damage to property, flight from an officer, trespassing and being held on the Iowa warrant, according to jail records.