Judge grants departure to probation for felon who led police on high-speed, wrong-way chase on K-10

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World
Christopher Dale wipes away tears at his sentencing on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in Douglas County District Court, with his attorney, Jessica Glendening.
A Douglas County judge on Tuesday sentenced a Gardner man to two years of probation in connection with a high-speed wrong-way police pursuit on Kansas Highway 10 in 2021.
The man, Christopher Dale, 37, emotionally hugged his defense attorney, Jessica Glendening, after Judge Amy Hanley ruled in his favor and against the District Attorney’s Office, who had sought the prison sentence that was presumed under state sentencing guidelines.
Glendening had successfully argued to Hanley that her client was a changed man — “unrecognizable” from his earlier days in the criminal justice system, she said, “night and day” — and that he and the community would benefit more from his remaining in society, where he could earn a living and continue to work on his sobriety, than from his being incarcerated.
Hanley said that she “struggled” with departing from the presumptive prison term for Dale, a repeat felon with the worst possible criminal history score for purposes of the sentencing guidelines, but she said that in balancing accountability with rehabilitation, the potential for rehabilitation outweighed further punishment for Dale, who had already served more than 18 months in jail for the offenses while awaiting disposition of his case — which was delayed at times by his previous insistence on acting as his own attorney and in being incarcerated for offenses in other counties.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World
Christopher Dale appears at his sentencing on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in Douglas County District Court, with his attorney, Jessica Glendening.
The underlying sentence Hanley gave, should Dale fail on probation, was 32 months — for one felony count of fleeing and eluding the police (32 months) and one felony count of criminal possession of a firearm (eight months), to run concurrently. It is illegal for felons to possess firearms, and Dale is a felon many times over in multiple Kansas counties, including convictions for arson, aggravated assault, aggravated robbery, theft, burglary and fraud, going back at least two decades.
In the latest case, Dale was accused of leading police on a high-speed chase on Sept. 24, 2021, after he failed to stop at a stop sign in Eudora. As previously reported, the chase traveled down North 1400 Road between Eudora and Lawrence, through a cornfield, and eventually included Dale driving at high speed and in the wrong lane of traffic on Kansas Highway 10, Haskell Avenue, 23rd Street and 31st Street.
Near the K-10 and Iowa Street intersection, deputies used a tactical vehicle intervention maneuver to spin Dale’s vehicle into the ditch, but his vehicle returned to the highway before deputies pinned it in a parking lot in the 3400 block of Iowa Street.
Two handguns were thrown from the vehicle while deputies pursued it. At least one of the guns recovered was determined to be stolen.
Dale at one time was charged with 11 counts of aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated endangering a child, two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon, one count of criminal damage, which was to the cornfield, and one count of felony flee and elude. In a deal with the state this summer, all but two charges — flee and elude and criminal possession of a firearm — were dismissed, and Dale pleaded no contest to the two remaining charges.
At the time of the Douglas County offenses, Dale was on felony bond related to charges in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties.
A sheriff’s deputy at Tuesday’s sentencing testified that the chase was unlike anything he had seen, reaching triple-digit speeds going the wrong way on K-10 and causing multiple cars to swerve off the road, endangering numerous people. Two law enforcement officers were nearly hit, Deputy Tyree Clark told Hanley.
“It was extremely dangerous,” he said, noting that bad memories were still with him four years later.
Dale’s attorney, however, made the case to Hanley — complete with a video presentation and photo comparisons of a long-haired and clean-cut Dale — that all of her client’s previous crimes could be tied to his drug addiction, childhood abuse and neglect and never having “a role model of a law-abiding adult.” She cited his recent successful rehabilitation efforts, his “amenability to probation” and his acceptance of responsibility as substantial and compelling reasons for Hanley to give him probation.
Sending him to prison, Glendening said, would result in his losing substantial progress toward his self-improvement.
Dale also addressed the court.
“I’m passionate about my recovery,” he told Hanley, blaming drugs for all of his offenses. “Every charge I’ve ever had was drug-related,” while acknowledging that his convictions weren’t for drug offenses.
Prosecutor Adam Carey, meanwhile, urged Hanley to order 40 months of prison, arguing that the chase, which involved numerous law enforcement officers, showed a complete disregard for human life, that Dale had multiple felony convictions, one of them the exact same offense as in the present case: being a felon in possession of a firearm. Carey said Dale had been given probation before but had still continued a life of crime.
Hanley asked Dale, “Why is this time different?” To which Dale replied, through tears, “everything is different.”
He said that he had never been in drug treatment before. At some point he realized — after a life largely spent in foster care, jail and prison, “I’m literally just a junkie, I can’t keep doing this.”
“I fully comprehend the extremely dangerous circumstances (in this case),” Hanley told the courtroom, but she said Dale had ultimately recognized what he had done to others, not just to himself, and she described him as “an individual amenable to probation,” who had shown he could be successful under a court-ordered treatment program.
Hanley told Dale she expected him to make the most of the departure to probation she had granted.
“You’ll get an opportunity,” Hanley told him, “and only one opportunity.”