By Shavonne Potts

Salisbury Post

A man involved in a high-speed chase through Salisbury last week has also been charged with two October purse snatchings.

The Rowan County Sheriff’s Department charged Milton Howard Jones, address unknown, with robbery in those two thefts.

Jones is being held in the Davidson County Detention Center with a bond in excess of $1 million, said Rowan County Sheriff’s Lt. John Sifford.

He is accused of stealing the purse of an 81-year-old China Grove woman at her house.

Officers said the woman arrived with her daughter at her Cannon Farm Road house. The two pulled into the driveway about 7:30 p.m. When the woman got out of the car, a man came from the rear of the house.

The women weren’t hurt, but a week prior to that, an 82-year-old woman was knocked down and her purse taken just outside her house. In that incident, the woman suffered a broken hip.

The 82-year-old woman, who lives on Daugherty Road, had returned from Food Lion when a man approached her from behind and knocked her to the ground. He ran toward a black car that was parked in a nearby driveway.

In last week’s high-speed pursuit that landed Jones in jail, he led law enforcement officers on a chase that began in Lexington and ended in Salisbury. Along the way, he caused at least three collisions and crashed into a fence at Klumac Road in Salisbury.

Sifford said Jones is also wanted for a series of purse snatchings in the Lexington area.

Officers said that on the day of the high-speed chase, Jones snatched a woman’s purse in Archdale. Officers from Lexington, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department, the N.C. Highway Patrol and the Archdale Police Department followed the suspect, who eventually sped down Innes Street.

Jones was apprehended by N.C. Highway Patrol troopers about 100 yards from the site where he’d crashed his car.

Contact Shavonne Potts at 704-797-4253 or spotts@salisburypost.com.