According to a police report, an officer was preparing to take Tara Oder and Linda Bennett from the city hall to the county jail on Wednesday.

Both women were handcuffed when Oder ran away, turning around and smirking at the pursuing officer, according to police.

After a foot chase, police caught Oder and put her in the back seat of a Struthers police cruiser with Bennett.

The Struthers officer says he was about a block from the jail when Oder squeezed through the partition window of the cruiser, grabbing both the steering wheel and the officer’s gun.

During the struggle, the officer says he managed to put the car in park and called police dispatch to report what was happening.

Officer says he still had his gun when he stepped out of the car. That is when police say Oder stepped on the gas and sped away, nearly striking the officer and an off duty sheriff’s deputy who had stopped to help.

Hopping into the deputy's personal vehicle, the officer and the deputy followed the stolen cruiser north on Belmont Avenue until they lost sight of the speeding police car.

The cruiser was found abandoned in the Arlington Heights area of Youngstown. Inside they found the belongings of the two women, but the officer's cell phone was missing.

The cell phone was traced to a grassy area outside the Rescue Mission on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Witnesses told investigators they had seen two women with t-shirts wrapped around their wrists outside the mission.  They said the women left on a WRTA bus.

A review of the WRTA footage revealed to police that only one of the women actually got on the bus.

Police believe the women are no longer together. They say the two had no previous relationship with one another.

Police are going to file escape charges against the women who at last report were still on the loose.

According to court records, Oder was already charged with having expired plates and driving without a license. Bennett faced a theft charge.

Chief Tim Roddy says his young officer did not do anything wrong,

"He made sure she was cuffed, made sure it was double-locked, it was behind her back. It's not like she had very skinny wrists to where there was a problem like that, she was secured in the back, how she might have gotten one of the cuffs off is a mystery," said Roddy.

Roddy said there is one change he may require of his officers and that will be to keep the plexiglass divider between the back of the cruiser and the front closed.

Roddy said it was open to giving the two women air since temperatures were in the 90's and there are no vents in the back of the cruiser.