Fleeing Driver Hits SUV, Injuring Woman

A Los Angeles man in a stolen pickup truck led police on a 20-minute chase through Southwest Los Angeles before broadsiding another vehicle carrying a mother taking her daughter to school, officials said.

The woman suffered a broken ankle in the crash but the girl was unhurt, authorities said.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were taking a stolen vehicle report when the pickup’s owner spotted his truck driving by. Authorities said Ricardo Antonio Larios, 22, was driving the white pickup on 91st Street as deputies gave chase.

Deputies, fearing for the public’s safety, were forced to suspend the pursuit when Larios allegedly drove onto the Harbor Freeway, going north in the southbound lanes.

But officers caught sight of the pickup again minutes later at the intersection of 107th and Hoover streets.

Before they could resume the chase, the truck smashed into an SUV driven by the woman on her way to drop her 6-year-old daughter at school, said Deputy Scott Butler. The woman’s vehicle veered to the right and smashed into the side of a house, knocking over a block wall under construction.

“The little girl is fine; she didn’t break anything,” Butler said. He said the mother, identified as Angela Mena, 30, had an ankle broken.

A resident of the house that was struck, Robert Pickering, 14, said he had been walking through the yard on his way to school just before the crash occurred.

He said his mother had called him back inside the house just moments before the vehicles collided. Otherwise, the Washington Preparatory High School student said, he might have been directly in the car’s path.

Instead, the teenager said, he heard the crash and ran to a bedroom window to see what had happened.

Larios was arrested at the scene and deputies said he would face several felony charges, including driving under the influence, grand theft, and felony hit and run.