Uninvolved driver killed when high-speed pursuit ends in violent crash in South L.A.
A burglary suspect being chased by law enforcement crashed into two vehicles in South Los Angeles early Wednesday, killing one of the innocent drivers.
The pursuit started around 1:30 a.m. after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department responded to a burglary call in Rancho Palos Verdes, the department said in a news release.
Deputies saw at least four suspects get into a white Lexus and a black Porsche, authorities told KTTV Channel 11. Deputies chased the vehicles onto the 110 Freeway, where the suspects drove with their vehicles’ headlights off.
The Porsche exited the freeway during the pursuit, and deputies continued to chase the Lexus. Deputies called off their pursuit because of excessive speeds but followed from the air and notified the California Highway Patrol, which picked up the chase on the freeway, according to the Sheriff’s Department. The CHP did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Times.
The downtown Los Angeles freeway is back open, but California leaders have said little about the precise damage, how it will be fixed and what it will cost.
Not long after, the Lexus crashed into two other vehicles near the intersection of Imperial Highway and Olive Street in Broadway-Manchester, the Los Angeles Police Department said. Around 2:20 a.m., firefighters responded to reports of one person ejected from their vehicle in the crash and another person trapped in their car.
A driver not involved in the pursuit was killed in the collision, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Brian Humphrey, and three ambulances took patients to hospitals. There was no immediate information about their ages or genders.
Three people in the Lexus were taken into custody and also treated for their injuries, according to news reports.
Pursuits by law enforcement officers in Southern California have come under growing scrutiny in recent years for the danger they pose to unwitting bystanders.
In 2021, the most recent information provided by the CHP, there were 12,513 police pursuits reported to the CHP by police agencies across the state, with 52 reported deaths. Thirty of the deaths were the drivers involved in the car chases, eight were passengers in the pursuit vehicles, and 14 deaths were people not involved in the car chases.
Out of 1,467 reported injuries, 640 were drivers of the pursued vehicles, 377 were their passengers, and 450 were uninvolved parties, according to the data.
In Los Angeles, the LAPD was involved in more than 4,200 police pursuits over a five-year period, according to a report prepared by the department that covered data from 2018 through this April.
Roughly a quarter of the pursuits, 1,032, resulted in a collision that caused injuries or deaths.
Nearly 500 of those injured and nine of those killed were not involved in the chases. By comparison, 462 fleeing suspects were injured in that span, with five dying, according to the report.
Times staff writers Libor Jany and James Queally contributed to this report.
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