ANAHEIM : Chase Ends in Crash; Officer, 2 Men Hurt

A chase that started at the immigration checkpoint near San Clemente ended Friday in a spectacular crash at an Anaheim intersection that injured a police officer and three other people.

The stolen, late-model luxury car, traveling through darkened city streets at an estimated 90 m.p.h. with its headlights off, clipped a car at Harbor Boulevard and North Street. Police said it then slammed headlong into a patrol car before coming to rest against a palm tree.

Police Officer Adelyn Lemmon and the two people in the stolen car were hospitalized with moderate injuries in the 4:50 a.m. accident. The police cruiser and the stolen car were both destroyed.

“It’s a miracle nobody was seriously injured or killed,” said Police Sgt. Richard Zschoche, noting that the patrol car was struck with such force that it was pushed 70 feet.

The driver and passenger, identified by police respectively as David D. Strange, 18, of Moorestown, N.J., and Samuel Edlestein, 20, of Cherry Hill, N.J., reportedly had eluded the Border Patrol when the 1988 Lincoln Town Car was recognized as stolen as it came across the border earlier from Mexico at San Ysidro, Zschoche said.

The car made it across the border but was recognized again when it came through the Border Patrol’s immigration checkpoint on Interstate 5.

California Highway Patrol officers later took up the chase. A CHP spokesman said the car sped at 115 m.p.h. with no lights before officers lost sight of it at the Harbor Boulevard offramp.

Although they had shaken their pursuers, two men in the stolen car roared past the Anaheim police station still without headlights and running red lights, and headed north on Harbor Boulevard, according to witnesses.

The accident occurred about two minutes after the car left the freeway. The Lincoln ran a red light and clipped off more than a foot of the nose of a Chevrolet Camaro driven by Richard Vondriska, 38, of Anaheim, who was stopped in the intersection to make a left turn.

Vondriska escaped with only bruises and other minor injuries.

The car next rammed the police car driven by Lemmon, 37, who was stopped for the red light south on Harbor Boulevard. She was airlifted to an undisclosed hospital, suffering from a head cut head and a bruise.

The speeding car hit the tree with such force that firefighters to cut the roof off the Lincoln to reach the two men. Strange was trapped for more than an hour in the wreckage.

Strange and Edlestein were taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange. Anaheim police arrested Strange on suspicion of evading and causing injury to a police officer. Zschoche said an investigation was continuing into other possible charges that might be lodged locally or by New Jersey authorities. Edlestein was not booked.