MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. — The woman who went viral over the weekend for escaping a Muskegon Heights police cruiser while in handcuffs was arrested Tuesday.
Kendra Aney, 38, was taken into custody Tuesday, according to the Muskegon County Prosecutor. She had been on the run since squeezing out of the back window of a police cruiser on Saturday, March 28.
Muskegon Heights Police Chief Maurice Sain said in a news release that someone called police to report the woman in an abandoned home on Tuesday morning.
Around 9 a.m., police found her inside the abandoned home in the 100 block of Rotterdam in Muskegon Heights. She’s now at the Muskegon County Jail facing several charges.
“Muskegon Heights PD would like to thank the citizen who called in and reported the female’s location,” Chief Sain said.
Aney was absconding from parole since Jan. 12, 2026, according to her Michigan Department of Corrections file. She was sentenced to a minimum of seven years in prison in 2017 following a plea conviction on a delivering or manufacturing controlled substances charge. She also has two larceny convictions and an operating while intoxicated conviction between 2010 and 2016.
Aney is expected to be arraigned on April 1.
At about 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Muskegon Heights Police Department (MHPD) said an officer found a vehicle parked at an abandoned business while on patrol in the area of Norton Avenue and Peck Street.
MHPD said the officer approached the vehicle and made contact with the people inside. During the investigation, MHPD identified the driver of the suspect vehicle, but could not identify a female passenger. An assisting officer was called with a fingerprint scanner, which was used to identify the woman passenger as Aney.
MHPD said they learned Aney had an outstanding parole violation and was taken into custody. She was handcuffed and secured in the rear seat of a MHPD patrol vehicle, police said.
While officers were searching the suspect vehicle, Aney was able to slip through a partially open window on the MHPD patrol vehicle, while still in handcuffs, and run away.
MHPD said that officers tried to locate her after she ran, but she was unable to be found. A few hours later on Saturday, at about 7:30 p.m., MHPD responded to a report of breaking and entering in the 3300 block of Peck Street. The incident reportedly happened at about 4:20 p.m. and MHPD believes that Aney was the same person who broke into the home.
A Facebook account that posts Muskegon happenings took a Facebook Live video of the ordeal, and that video has been shared hundreds of thousands of times across different social media platforms. That account, called Block Paper Weekly, gave 13 ON YOUR SIDE permission to use the video in our reporting.
