Last suspect caught in cab holdup

Spokane police have rounded up the last of three suspects in the Dec. 28 robbery of a taxi driver who was choked unconscious.

Jade Lee Hehner, 26, was arrested Wednesday on a warrant charging first-degree robbery and first-degree possession of stolen property. He remained in the Spokane County Jail Thursday night in lieu of $75,000 bail.

Co-defendant Daniel Issac Helder, 19, who was arrested within an hour of the robbery, also remained in the Spokane County Jail Thursday. Helder is charged only with first-degree robbery.

Court documents say Helder confessed when police used a dog to track him down after the 11:15 p.m. robbery in the 2100 block of West Fourth Avenue, near Coeur d’Alene Park. Helder reportedly implicated Hehner and 27-year-old Michael Lynn Shrader, who was arrested Tuesday in Okanogan County.

Shrader was being held on a Spokane County warrant charging first-degree robbery and first-degree possession of stolen property as well as Okanogan County charges of third-degree theft, forgery and failure last August to register as a sex offender.

Shrader is a level 3 sex offender who moved to Cheney late last year. He was convicted of first-degree rape involving an 11-year-old girl in Okanogan County in 1993.

According to court documents, Helder told police he, Shrader and Hehner hatched a plot in which Helder and Shrader asked cab driver Allen W. Jensen to drive them to the vicinity of Coeur d’Alene Park. Hehner reportedly was to follow the cab in a pickup truck that Hehner and Shrader had stolen in Omak, Wash.

A police affidavit says Helder told officers that Shrader, seated behind Jensen, choked the cab driver with a 3-foot chain until Jensen briefly passed out. Shrader allegedly took Jensen’s money, car keys and the microphone to his two-way radio.

The stolen truck was found near the scene of the robbery. The police affidavit doesn’t explain why the truck wasn’t used as a getaway vehicle — which Helder allegedly said had been the plan.