Traffic Slowed Truck : Fleeing Lettuce Rig Wilts After Chase

A trucker suspected of assaulting a California Highway Patrol officer, then weaving in and out of the center median during a 20-mile chase through rush hour traffic on the Ventura Freeway Friday was arrested after he pulled the big rig over in Encino and tried to flee on foot, police said.

Dale Eugene Jones, 28, was arrested on suspicion of battery on a police officer and failure to yield, CHP Sgt. L. G. Heckert said. Jones, whose address was unknown, was being held in Ventura County Jail, Heckert said.

The chase began about 4:30 p.m. after the suspect, who had picked up a load of lettuce in Oxnard, got into an argument with a CHP officer at the Conejo Grade truck scale in Thousand Oaks, Heckert said.

“The scale officer advised that the truck was in an unsafe condition, needed repair and couldn’t leave the scales until it was fixed,” Heckert said. “When he tried to detain him there, he physically assaulted the officer.”

The man then got into his truck and drove east on the Ventura Freeway. During the 40-minute chase, speeds ranged from 70 m.p.h. down to 35 m.p.h. as the suspect hit rush-hour traffic, CHP Sgt. Albert Lorenzen said.

Two Los Angeles police cars and a helicopter joined two CHP units as the truck reached Winnetka Avenue in Woodland Hills, but the driver showed no signs of giving up the chase, Lorenzen said. But, as he neared the Amestoy Avenue pedestrian overcrossing, the truck veered from the fast lane into the two slow lanes and stopped, Lorenzen said.

“He just put on the brake and ran,” Lorenzen said. The driver climbed a fence and ran into a residential neighborhood, followed by a CHP officer and a Los Angeles police officer, Lorenzen said. The officers caught the suspect and arrested him near the corner of Albers Street and Oak Park Avenue, he said.

The refrigerator truck, registered to Franks & Son, Inc. in Big Cabin, Okla., was driven off the freeway by a CHP officer and later impounded.

The scale officer suffered a cut on his head during the altercation, but he was not hospitalized, police said.