Deputy hit with ammonia during co-op theft

Hawkeye, Iowa — A Fayette County sheriff’s deputy caught a heavy dose of anhydrous ammonia while trying to nab a thief at Fredericksburg Farmers Co-op Feb. 1 and had to be checked over for minor exposure at nearby Palmer Hospital. At last word, the thief is still being sought and the deputy is none the worse for the incident. “She was taken to be checked over just as a precautionary measure, and was treated and released later in the afternoon and is doing fine now,” Chief Deputy Jim Davis told Green Markets. Davis explained that Deputy Whitney Jarvis was on patrol in her car when she came across the co-op and spotted a man running from the tank area. The lock on the tank had been broken off and was causing a substantial leak. When the deputy turned her car around to talk to the suspect, she was hit by an ammonia cloud that was blowing across the highway. Fredericksburg Farmers Co-op Manager Ron Cruise said the problem developed when the wind shifted and blew ammonia from the open tank toward the officer. “It was a fairly substantial leak,” Davis reported. “The co-op told us the tank was 80 percent full, and by the time the hazmat team got it shut down it had leaked down to 20 percent. So that amounted to about half the tank contents being released.” Roads leading up to the co-op were closed during the investigation.