LIBERTY — Township police are looking for a suspect in a chase that ended with the person fleeing into a wooded area on foot after crashing a dirt bike early Wednesday.

According to a police report, an officer traveling southbound on Belmont Avenue spotted a man riding a black dirt bike northbound with no taillights or license plate.

The officer turned around and attempted to initiate a traffic stop in the Churchill Hubbard Road PNC Bank parking lot, but the rider looked back and fled, according to the report.

The pursuit wound through several local areas, with the rider driving through the grass of the bank, making U-turns on Middle Drive, and pulling into the entrance of the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library’s Liberty branch.

The rider continued to evade officers on side streets, including Overbrook and Vienna Avenue, before heading back onto Churchill Hubbard Road.

The report states that the dirt bike eventually circumvented a second marked cruiser near Sampson Road and approached the Interstate 80 overpass, but the rider could not access it because of the fence line running north and south along the brush, the report states.

The report states the officer heard the bike turn off after losing sight of it, later finding it stuck in a ditch along the fence line, and the rider escaped through a gap in the fence on foot.

An officer located the suspect crouching near the guardrail by the Sampson Road overpass shortly after, but the man ignored commands to stop, jumped over the guardrail, and ran back into the wooded area, traveling southbound.

Ohio State Highway Patrol and Hubbard Township officers helped set up a perimeter around the woods, while a drone unit from the Mahoning County Emergency Management Agency was deployed to search the area with negative results.

Officers, while waiting for the drone to arrive, were able to obtain the ownership info for the dirt bike, based on its VIN, and an officer attempted to contact the owner.

A tow company took the bike to an impound lot, where it will be held pending an investigation, and criminal charges are pending the suspect being positively identified.