A suspected stolen vehicle pursuit in South Los Angeles ended with the driver out of his crashed car and on foot in an alley, trying to hide from the LAPD officers chasing him. He was about to fail at staying hidden. But for just a short while the officers also failed to find him.
The pursuit began when Los Angeles police responded to a stolen vehicle call involving a silver, four-door mid-sized car. According to FOX 11 Los Angeles, the chase moved from the freeway to surface streets in South LA, with the driver hitting at least three other vehicles along the way. The fourth crash, at a busy intersection, ended the driving portion of the chase.
After the collision, the driver got out and ran. He cut across the street, headed into a residential alley and ducked into a narrow space beside a parked blue car. He lay low between the vehicle and a metal fence.
That’s where LAPD cruisers arrived almost on top of him without realizing it. Officers jumped out and ran past the parked blue car, searching deeper into the alley for the man they had just chased. From the helicopter overhead, he was plainly visible.
The Pursuit
LAPD officers responded to a stolen vehicle call involving a blue, four-door mid-sized car. The driver led officers through South Los Angeles, first at high speeds on the freeway and then onto surface streets. During the pursuit, the driver made contact with at least two vehicles and rear-ended another and continued on with some decidedly heavy front-end damage. The driving phase of the chase ended when the silver car hit a fourth vehicle at a busy intersection.
A man in a white shirt got out of the damaged silver car after the final crash and ran across the street, heading toward a residential alley as a helicopter tracked him from above. In the air-to-ground footage, he can be seen ducking into a narrow gap between a parked blue car and a black metal fence and then lying low against the side of the car, using its body and the fence line as cover.
The Search That Almost Missed Him
Several LAPD cruisers pulled into the alley and stopped almost directly beside the same blue car. Officers jumped out and ran past it, searching deeper down the alley as if the suspect had kept running. From the helicopter, the suspect remained in plain view; on the ground, officers appeared not to see him.
FOX 11’s Stu Mundel, reporting live from SkyFOX, said out loud on the air that the man was right there beside the car (“Come on guys, he’s right there!”). He worked to communicate the suspect’s location to officers on the ground. At least one officer came within a few steps of the suspect before looking in another direction.
Eventually one of the officers bent down near the blue car, and the rest of the team converged on the spot. The suspect was surrounded, ordered down and taken into custody beside the same vehicle he had been using as cover. According to FOX 11, one suspect had been arrested at the end of the chase.