Cash, Freeway Caution Are Thrown to the Wind
The California Highway Patrol found out Tuesday that when $10,000 in small bills gets loose on the freeway, motorists will not think twice about abandoning their usual driving habits.
That’s what happened at about 1 p.m. on the Ventura Freeway in Sherman Oaks, when a bagful of money slipped off the rack of a motorcycle driven by a courier and scattered all over the westbound lanes, CHP spokesman Dan Loughrey said.
“It was pandemonium,” Loughrey said. “People were running in all lanes of traffic trying to scoop up the loot. . . . The cash was blowing everywhere, and people did everything they could to snare some of it.”
Traffic was snarled for about half an hour just west of the San Diego Freeway intersection as CHP officers scrambled to get the motorists back into their cars, Loughrey said.
Officers retrieved what bills they could and returned them to the unlucky courier, who was not identified, Loughrey said. He did not know how much money was recovered.
There were no injuries reported and nobody was arrested, he said.
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