A thief was fully clothed when he stole a Hummer limo at gunpoint in Irvine Saturday night.
But, as a helicopter officer informed after the man who led cops on a bi-county chase jumped out of the stretch in Whittier and started running, “He's naked!”
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Ahmad Mabrok, 29, who was arrested on suspicion of carjacking, evading arrest and resisting officers, was taken to a local hospital for treatment of no doubt several bites to his naked body by the police dog who captured him.
A fully clothed gunman told the limo driver to get out of the limo just after 8:20 p.m. next to the 5 freeway at Burt and Sand Canyon in Irvine. A sheriff's deputy who heard the stolen limo broadcast saw an extended Hummer zoom by and gave chase through Aliso Viejo and Laguna Hills before the driver headed northbound on the 5 from Oso Parkway.
Picking up the California Highway Patrol and a police helicopter along the way, the chase went through Orange County to Los Angeles County and finally off the 5 at Valley View Avenue and Alondra Boulevard in Whittier around 9:45 p.m., where a now-naked driver got out and started running while the limo kept rolling.
“He came to a stop. “He's bailed!” the police helicopter is heard saying on the tape below, before adding, “He's naked!”
The tape then shows the man waving his arms around as he runs about a lawn and then flailing about as the German Shepherd police dog subdues him before officers with weapons drawn approach.
“We cannot tell you why he was not
wearing clothes,” said Lt. Julia Engen, the Irvine Police Department spokesman, of the suspect taken to Orange County Jail. “All we know is that he was wearing them at the original
crime so [he] took them off along the way.”
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.