CALHOUN COUNTY, Iowa – There’s an update to a story that went viral last week out of Calhoun County.
A father who was pulled over and held at gunpoint has been ticketed for speeding his laboring wife to the hospital.
Last Tuesday, Ben Kohnen was taking orders from his wife, despite seeing the emergency lights in his rear view mirror.
His wife, Rachel, was in labor and thought she wasn’t going to make to the hospital in time to have her baby.
Ben was going 30 mph over the speed limit and that caught the attention of police.
“He starts following me and he turns on his lights and my wife says ‘we can’t pull over, the baby is coming now,’” Ben told WHO-TV.
“I did tell him not to stop,” Rachel added.
Ben listened to his wife and refused to stop when officers tried to pull him over, so police ended up using stop-sticks to blow out the tires on their SUV bringing the couple to a stop on the outskirts of Fort Dodge.
The Kohnens say they were ordered to the ground and held at gunpoint until police realized it was an emergency.
The couple says they tried to call 911 but the dispatcher probably couldn’t understand Rachel in between her contractions.
The story went viral with national and international media outlets covering it.
However, that’s not where it ends.
The Calhoun County attorney is issuing two citations: a speeding ticket for going 86 in a 55 miles-per-hour zone and failure to yield to an emergency vehicle.
Ben tells us this could put his CDL license at risk, which he uses for his job.
