Steering Clear : New Battle of Bull Run Snarls Traffic on Santa Ana and Orange Freeways

Apparently running for its life, an 800-pound Brahma bull led police on a freeway chase in midafternoon traffic Tuesday before being captured on the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim.

“It was kind of a mess out there,” said Bud Powell, a dispatcher at the Santa Ana office of the California Highway Patrol.

The bull was first spotted by residents in an Orange neighborhood just east of Anaheim Stadium, near Orangewood Avenue and Eckhoff Street, about 2:20 p.m. and was later seen loping onto the Orange Freeway, State Route 57, near Orangewood Avenue.

“We had reports of the animal being in the No. 1 lane at 15 mph on the 57 Freeway,” said Orange Police Officer Don Hearn, who added that police radios crackled with updates of the bull’s progress throughout the chase of four to five miles.

“One report had him making a successful transition from the 57 to the 5,” Hearn said, referring to the Santa Ana Freeway, Interstate 5.

“He probably walked down from the 57 to the 5, but that’s all I really know about it,” Hearn said.

The details of how the bull escaped from its owner were not known late Tuesday, but Joe Oliver, chief of field services for the county’s animal control division, said the owner told police that the bull had gotten away as he was preparing to take it to a slaughterhouse.

With help from CHP cars, which blocked the northbound lanes of the Santa Ana Freeway, animal control officers finally captured the bull about 3 p.m. by wedging it between their trucks and a freeway fence not far from the Katella Avenue off-ramp.

County animal control Sgt. Bob Huebner lassoed the weary Brahma and held it until a trailer arrived, Oliver said.

He said six or seven animal control officers had been dispatched for the freeway chase, a “considerable expenditure of manpower.”

“The bull will stay at the animal shelter until the owner comes in and pays for the roundup costs,” Oliver said.