Yorba Linda : Man Leaps From Bus on Freeway, Runs Off

A man jumped from the window of a moving Southern California Rapid Transit District bus on the Riverside Freeway in Yorba Linda Wednesday, then managed to fend off a trucker and disappear into the brush before police officers arrived, authorities said.

The man, described as white and of average height and weight, leaped out the back window of the bus as it approached Gypsum Canyon Road at 9:45 a.m. doing about 55 m.p.h., Brea police said. Brea police also provide law enforcement for Yorba Linda.

Sgt. Bill Vukelich said witnesses reported that the man took “at least four big bounces from the No. 1 lane all the way over to the freeway shoulder and finally off the pavement into the dirt.”

A trucker who watched the leap stopped and offered to help. He told police that the jumper had suffered a severe cut on the side of his head. However, the man struggled with the trucker and, Vukelich said, lifted him overhead before throwing him into some bushes.

Vukelich said police are speculating that the man might have been under the influence of a drug, perhaps PCP.

The RTD bus, which was bound from Riverside to Los Angeles with a stop in Corona, continued on for about six miles before pulling into a weigh station on the freeway. Vukelich said the driver apparently was unaware of the leap until a rider informed him of it.

Police said that after tussling with the trucker, the injured man fled into the brush, where he eluded discovery despite a police search that employed a police dog, a helicopter and rangers from nearby Featherly Regional Park.

The search was difficult because the brush is thick in the sparsely populated area, Vukelich said. “The bushes are so thick out there, you could walk within five feet of someone and not see them,” he said.

Vukelich said that a search in the park did turn up footprints near the Santa Ana River but that it was unknown if they were made by the bus rider. A check of local hospitals was also fruitless, and the hunt was called off about 1 p.m.