A Toyota 4Runner flipping in Anaheim after a police chase this morning was not the worst of it.
One responding officer, with his patrol car's lights and sirens on, struck and killed a dog that had wandered into the street.
Meanwhile, the unidentified SUV driver was arrested after a short foot pursuit.
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A plainclothes officer saw a man tampering with cars near Magnolia and La Palma avenues around 9:50 a.m., but when the cop approached to ask what's up, the dude dove into the 4Runner and darted off, according to the Anaheim Police Department.
That began the short police chase on the streets that ended at Magnolia and Winston Road, where the 4Runner struck a light pole and rolled over. But the pursuit was not over as the driver ran off into a nearby apartment complex.
It was when a perimeter was being set around the apartments that the dog was struck. A man police identified as the 4Runner driver, but not by name, was arrested a short time later on suspicion of felony evasion. After treatment at a local hospital, his next scheduled stop is a jail cell.
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.