A high-speed pursuit across two freeways ended Tuesday morning when a California Highway Patrol officer used a PIT maneuver to stop a black Range Rover in a Montebello residential street. The driver is in custody.
The chase
The pursuit ran from the 405 Freeway in Sherman Oaks, east along the 10 through central Los Angeles, and into Montebello, according to ABC7. It ended when a CHP officer performed a PIT, or precision immobilization technique, striking the SUV's driver side to spin it to a stop in the middle of a street. Three officers pulled the driver out and handcuffed him. No injuries were reported.
The California Highway Patrol had primary responsibility, with the Santa Monica Police Department and other agencies involved.
Why he was wanted
The reason the driver was being sought predates Tuesday. On July 3, Santa Monica police responded to a reported road-rage incident involving a firearm near Cloverfield Boulevard and Broadway. The suspect left before officers arrived. When he was located in the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday morning, he fled, which set off the pursuit.
So the sequence is: an alleged road-rage confrontation with a gun more than two weeks ago, a suspect who got away, and an arrest that finally came at the end of a freeway chase.
The link that was ruled out
There is one thread worth being careful and clear about, because it briefly connected this case to a killing the Herald has covered.
Investigators initially considered whether this suspect might be connected to the fatal shooting near the Santa Monica Pier, the death of a man in a parking lot beside the pier that Santa Monica police have been investigating. According to ABC7, authorities later refuted that link. This road-rage case is, per that reporting, unrelated to the pier homicide.
That distinction matters, and it is exactly the kind of early speculation that responsible reporting has to correct rather than carry. For a period, two separate Santa Monica cases looked as though they might be one. They are not. The pier killing remains a separate, open investigation.
What is settled and what is not
Settled: a suspect wanted over a July 3 armed road-rage incident was arrested Tuesday after a multi-freeway pursuit ended by a CHP PIT maneuver in Montebello, and he is in custody.
Not settled: the charges he will face, and the details of the July 3 incident beyond that a firearm was reportedly involved. The Herald will follow the case as prosecutors act, and has noted the pier connection only to record that it has been dismissed.
