Woman Abducted, Beaten on Freeway

A woman whose car broke down on a freeway in Orange was abducted, choked and repeatedly beaten by a man as he drove her along several highways, police said Thursday.

Orange Police Detective Mike Pera said the assault had “sexual overtones” but that the woman was not raped or molested. Police on Thursday asked for the public’s help in providing information about the assailant, who was still at large.

The woman, a 22-year-old Anaheim resident who was not seriously injured in the attack Tuesday afternoon, escaped when the driver pulled his pickup truck onto a freeway shoulder, Pera said.

He said the woman kept her wits after her escape, running against traffic on the gamble that the man wouldn’t back up his truck on the freeway, looking over her shoulder for his license plate as she fled, and remembering important details about the assailant’s appearance and truck.

The woman’s car tire went flat on the southbound Costa Mesa Freeway south of Chapman Avenue, police said. About 1:15 p.m., a man pulled over and offered her a ride to the next freeway off-ramp, which she accepted.

The 200-pound man, who had collar-length brown hair and a reddish-brown mustache, did not stop at the next freeway exit and “began making sexual advances and grabbing her,” Detective Bob Taylor said in a prepared statement.

The woman struggled with the man, who then struck her on the head and arms repeatedly and began choking her, Taylor said. The man drove along several freeways before steering the truck to a shoulder of the San Diego Freeway in Los Angeles, where the woman jumped from the vehicle, police said.

Two motorists stopped, and one of them called Los Angeles police from a phone in his car, Pera said.

The woman told officers her assailant was about 6 feet tall, 30 to 32 years old with a muscular build. He had large tattoos on his forearms, one of them possibly a large dragon above his left wrist.

The truck was described as an early 1970s Ford Courier, light blue on the inside and brown on the outside with wood panels on the pickup bed. Witnesses to the abduction or those who have information about the assailant and his truck are asked to phone either Pera or Taylor at 532-0252.