A female motorist being chased by Orange County sheriff's deputies south on the 5 freeway fatally shot herself in the San Onofre area this afternoon, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The incident, which happened around 1:15 p.m., blocked four lanes of the southbound 5 until one lane was eventually opened up as the investigation continued.
]
The chase began after a member of the unidentified woman's family contacted the sheriff's department to say she was threatening to commit suicide, according to sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock.
She was located in her car in Dana Point, but she drove off as she saw deputies approaching, according to Hallock.
The chase ended after the woman swerved off the freeway and crashed to a halt, adds the CHP, which notes no other drivers were injured.
Hallock says the woman was then found inside the car, dead from a gunshot wound.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
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.