A man who led Dubuque police on a high‑speed chase that ended with his car on its hood and his gun, heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine in the snow, was sentenced March 17, 2022, to four years in federal prison.

Richard Allen Roberts, age 39, from Chicago, Illinois, received the prison term after September 27, 2021 guilty pleas to one count of distributing crack near a playground and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

In a plea agreement, Roberts admitted that he sold about a half gram of crack cocaine to a confidential informant near Jefferson Park in Dubuque on January 26, 2021. About a week later, police tracked Roberts’s car from Dubuque to Chicago. When he returned to Iowa on February 5, 2021, officers stopped the car after it crossed the bridge into Dubuque from Wisconsin. A narcotics K9 alerted to the odor of narcotics coming from Roberts’s vehicle. After an officer asked Roberts to get out of his car, Roberts put the car in gear and fled. During the subsequent chase, Roberts’ vehicle reached speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour and collided with a snowplow but kept going. Roberts eventually lost control of his car approximately 3.5 miles away in Illinois, flipping the car over into a snow‑filled median. When the car turned over, officers found a plastic bag containing about 32 grams of powder cocaine, 44 grams of crack cocaine, over 9 grams of heroin, 1.5 gram of heroin and fentanyl. Next to the bag was a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol. Roberts had previously been convicted of 11 prior felony crimes in Illinois.

Roberts was sentenced to 48 months imprisonment by United States District Court Judge C.J. Willand. He must also serve a 6-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.