A 22-year-old from Savage will serve more than 13 years in prison for firing an assault-style rifle at a Bloomington squad car while police officers were taking cover behind it. Joshua Rocha was sentenced to 160 months, or about 13.3 years, by Hennepin County District Judge Emily Froehle. He got credit for 311 days already spent in jail.
Rocha pleaded guilty in August to 3 counts of first-degree assault on a peace officer. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors dismissed the attempted murder charges. The court also gave him 90 days for driving under the influence and fleeing police.
It started at about 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 4, 2025, near Old Shakopee Road and Killebrew Drive, just down the road from Mall of America. Officers saw Rocha driving the wrong way and tried to pull him over, but he kept going. Police then used a PIT maneuver, a tactic where a squad car nudges the back of a fleeing vehicle to spin it out, and that finally stopped him.
He then ignored orders to get out of the car. Officers spotted an assault-style rifle, and Rocha fired shots at a squad car with 3 officers taking cover behind it. The shots broke the squad's rear window and damaged its exterior. In all, 11 officers responded and 5 of them fired back. Rocha was hit in the hand, and officers took him into custody. No officers were hurt.
Police Chief Booker Hodges was blunt about how it ended. Officers used "a little bit of lead persuasion to get the man to stop shooting at us," he said, adding, "We're grateful today that no one is visiting the undertaker."
