Police arrested a 20-year-old La Grande man on Saturday evening, May 31, in Haines after he allegedly fled from a traffic stop on Highway 30 about 2.5 miles south of Haines.

Eithen Aaron Mackay is charged with reckless driving and attempting to elude police. He was also cited on a warrant from Union County, according to court records.

Mackay was taken to the Baker County Jail, where he remained on Monday afternoon, June 2. Mackay was arraigned Monday afternoon in Baker County Circuit Court.

According to a probable cause affidavit written by Deputy Bo Hansen of the Baker County Sheriff’s Office, he was in his patrol car on Highway 30, about 3 miles of Haines, around 4:53 p.m. May 31 when he clocked on radar a white four-door car at 80 mph. The car was driving north on the highway toward Haines.

Hansen wrote that the car stopped after he turned on his overhead lights.

Hansen wrote that as he walked toward the car, the “driver looked over to the front passenger, then glanced hard into the left side mirror and took off from the traffic stop at a high rate of speed heading north bound, throwing gravel as it left my location.”

Hansen wrote that he ended the pursuit a couple minutes later after watching the white car pass two other cars near the Haines Rodeo grounds. The white car crossed the southbound fog line while passing, and Hansen wrote that he could see “dust flying in the air” as he drove into Haines.

About two minutes later, around 4:57 p.m., Hansen wrote that a man flagged him down at the Haines Market, saying a white car had driven past and turned right onto Third Street.

Hansen wrote that multiple people were standing in front of the Haines Steakhouse, motioning to him that the white car had driven east on Third Street.

Hansen wrote that he saw the white car, unoccupied, parked at First and Wilcox streets, around 5 p.m. He said he talked to two people in the home and neither knew anything about the car.

Around 5:54 p.m., Hansen wrote, he went to another home on Cole Street in Haines where Oregon State Police Trooper Justus Gray, and Sheriff’s Deputy Matt Rosin, had stopped two people, one of whom was Mackay, the alleged driver of the white car.

Hansen said he learned that a woman had seen two people walking near Cole and Second streets just after a white car went past at high speed.

Hansen arrested Mackay at 7:52 p.m., and Rosin drove Mackay to the Baker County Jail.

Mackay is scheduled to enter a plea on June 18 at 2 p.m. in Baker County Circuit Court.

Mackay pleaded guilty in December 2022 in Harney County to two counts of assaulting a public safety officer, and one count of first-degree criminal mischief.

He was sentenced to 25 months in state custody. Mackay, then 18, admitted assaulting two employees at the Oregon Youth Authority prison in Burns in August 2022.

In 2024, Mackay was accepted into the Community Service Restitution Program in Union County, according to court records.