Update, 9:51 a.m.:
By Eric Francis, Standard Correspondent
WINDSOR — The Windsor man who was being sought in connection with the ambush and murder of his estranged girlfriend in Windsor on Monday morning appears to have shot and killed himself at the conclusion of high-speed chase with the Kansas Highway Patrol late Wednesday afternoon.
Police are awaiting the results of an autopsy to confirm that the deceased driver is in fact Jason Kendall, 27, who was being sought by Vermont authorities for the murder of Molly Helland, 22, the mother of Kendall’s young child, but Vermont State Police said late Wednesday night that the description of the body and the circumstances appear to be a match for Kendall.
A Kansas Highway Patrol trooper spotted a silver 1996 Honda with a stolen Massachusetts license plate on it headed west on Interstate 70 in western central Kansas not far from the town of Ellis around 6 p.m. local time Wednesday evening and attempted to stop it, according to a KHP press release.
The car fled west reaching speeds of 105 mph before “stop sticks” were successfully deployed in its path, puncturing the tires and sending it through the median and clear across the eastbound lanes where it entered a ditch and drove through a Kansas Department of Transportation highway boundary fence before coming to a stop.
Troopers approached the vehicle and determined that the driver, who was the lone occupant of the Honda, was dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Captain J.P. Sinclair, the Chief Criminal Investigator for the Vermont State Police said in a press release late Wednesday night that the car and the body were “consistent” with Jason Kendall who owned such a vehicle and had been spotted stealing Massachusetts license plates outside a Denny’s restaurant in Holyoke just hours after the shooting late on Monday morning.
Before the fatal pursuit erupted on the far side of Kansas late Wednesday afternoon, the last credible sighting of Kendall had been in the town of Springfield, Massachusetts mid-afternoon on Monday.