A 28-year-old Liberty man has been sentenced to a decade in prison after a high-speed chase through the city last year led investigators to a stolen car and a bag of fentanyl authorities say contained enough lethal doses to kill 19,500 people. Corbin Munsell was convicted of tampering with a motor vehicle, aggravated fleeing under Valentine’s Law, and drug trafficking following the investigation, which began near Liberty Square.
According to KCTV, Clay County Sheriff’s deputies spotted a black Buick Envision and attempted to stop it after connecting the vehicle to a stolen white Dodge Challenger. Authorities reported that Munsell fled at a high rate of speed westbound on E. Mill Street from Jewel Street, eventually reaching 72 mph in a 25-mph zone. Officials said he ran a blinking red light, continued through the intersection of Kansas and Fairview Avenue, and drove into oncoming traffic at E. Mill Street and Sunset Avenue as deputies pursued.
Search Warrant Turns Up Stolen Car and Fentanyl
The pursuit led investigators to a residence in Liberty, where law enforcement officers executed a search warrant. Officers recovered the stolen white Dodge Challenger and discovered a bag of fentanyl on the property, according to the same report. The scale of the seizure echoes earlier warnings from the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, which in its 2023 annual report said its canine teams recovered 85 grams of fentanyl across 279 narcotics searches that year, calculating that haul alone represented roughly 42,500 lethal doses.
Assistant Prosecutor Alyssa Benjamin handled the case against Munsell under Case No. 25CY-CR02553, according to the Clay County Prosecutor. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office was involved in the investigation, according to the office.
How Valentine’s Law Changed the Stakes
Munsell’s aggravated fleeing conviction was secured under Missouri’s Valentine’s Law, formally RSMo Section 575.151, which took effect in August 2024 and created the specific offense of aggravated fleeing a stop or detention of a motor vehicle. Under the statute, that offense is a Class D felony carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in prison with no eligibility for probation or parole when a fleeing driver creates a substantial risk of serious injury or death, per the Revised Statutes of Missouri. The law created a specific aggravated-fleeing offense.
The law also establishes a statutory presumption that a driver is fleeing once they see emergency lights or hear sirens and keep going, and it explicitly bars defendants from arguing that an officer acted unlawfully in making the underlying stop. Penalties escalate further under the statute, moving from a Class D felony to a Class B felony if a pursuit injures another person, and up to a Class A felony carrying potential life imprisonment if a chase causes a death, according to Police1.
The statute bears the name of St. Louis County Police Detective Antonio “Tony” Valentine, and a 2021 pursuit involved a fatal collision involving him, according to the Dulle Heany Law blog. Hoodline has covered other cases prosecuted under the same statute in recent weeks, including a chase near Goodfellow and an ATV pursuit that ended in a St. Charles tree line.
Fentanyl Enforcement Amid Falling Overdose Numbers
The Munsell case lands amid a broader statewide push against fentanyl trafficking even as overdose death numbers have been trending downward. Preliminary health data examined by the University of Missouri St. Louis and state health officials showed a 26% drop in Missouri drug overdose deaths during the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, per KSMU. The report also discusses growing naloxone use and recovery opportunities.
That local trend mirrors national numbers. Provisional CDC data released in August 2025 indicated that overall U.S. drug overdose deaths fell by 25% for the 12-month period ending in March 2025 compared with the previous year, a figure the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services highlighted around National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day.
The enforcement push has also strained local jail capacity. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office 2025 annual report found the local jail’s average daily inmate population rose 19% year-over-year to 345 inmates in 2025, a 38% increase compared to 2023, as felony filings tied to traffic and narcotics cases have climbed.
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