A police chase that began with a residential burglary report out of the Peppertree Homes subdivision in Tustin seems to have just ended in the Sepulveda Avenue tunnel under the overpass that jetliners cross at the LAX south runway complex.
Tustin Police Sgt. Jeff Blair, who was on the air with KTLA/Channel 5's Morning News team as events were unfolding, confirmed a “pit maneuver” crash stopped the white sedan with a dented back end around 9:06 a.m.
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The car had been chased at high speeds on the 105 freeway past the 405 interchange and into the tunnel.
A
suspect was in custody and en route to Tustin for booking on burglary,
fleeing, evading arrest and possibly other charges, according to Blair.
His account of what led to the chase:
Tustin
Police received a call about a residential burglary in progress in the
Peppertree subdivision, which is in the southeast part of the city.
An
officer who responded in a marked police car arrived just as the white
sedan was fleeing. He lost sight of the car on the northbound 5
freeway, but a detective in an unmarked police vehicle managed to spot
it on the 5 in the Anaheim area. Anaheim Police were enlisted to help
pick up the pursuit at that time.
The chase eventually ended in
the tunnel. Blair was unsure if the suspect was armed. He believed the
back-end damage was the result of an earlier pit maneuver that failed
to stop the driver.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.