Distraught Driver Leads Officers on a Chase

A 29-year-old Corona man led Orange County police on a high-speed chase Monday that ended when he pulled into a police parking lot and passed out, bleeding from self-inflicted stab wounds, authorities said.

Robert M. Torres was taken to Los Alamitos Medical Center in serious condition, suffering from a drug overdose and cuts to his neck and stomach, police said.

Torres, who also uses the name Robert Redfeather and lived in Garden Grove last year, has a history of trying to get Los Alamitos police officers to kill him, police said.

No one else was injured in the 60-mile pursuit over Orange County freeways and city streets.

At about 1:18 a.m., Los Alamitos police received a call that Torres planned to make a police officer kill him. The caller, a friend of Torres’, described the distraught man’s car as a Subaru and gave his approximate location in the city, police said.

Police Officers Rene Vantilborg and Dave Conte heard the description of the car over their radio and saw it parked near the intersection of Los Alamitos Boulevard and Catalina Street.

Torres, who was drinking in his car at the time, stomped on the accelerator and charged the patrol cruiser at 60 m.p.h., but the officers evaded him and the chase began.

Torres made it to the Garden Grove Freeway and led police officers in patrol cars and two helicopters on a chase at speeds of more than 80 m.p.h. east to the Anaheim Hills, south to Costa Mesa, back north through Santa Ana and Tustin and then west again to Los Alamitos.

Shortly before 2:30 a.m., Torres pulled into the Los Alamitos police parking lot and was found unconscious in his locked car, an officersaid.

Police have not filed any charges against Torres. He is being held at the hospital for 72-hour psychiatric observation, police said.