High-Speed Chase Ends in Suicide

Two men being chased by police led officers on a harrowing, twisting pursuit Friday that began on the Harbor Freeway, switched to a footrace with gun volleys exchanged across a busy downtown intersection, then turned back into a high-speed chase of a stolen truck through five miles of city streets and freeway.

The pursuit ended when one man, who had commandeered a pickup truck at gunpoint, drove a few miles, and--as the stolen truck was still being chased down a street--shot himself once in the head, Los Angeles police said.

The unidentified man died in the cab of the truck, which came to a stop when it smashed into a car in the 1800 block of South Hooper Avenue just after 3 p.m. The driver of that car was unhurt.

Downtown, moments earlier, the other unidentified suspect was shot and wounded by police officers at the bottom of the 6th Street off-ramp of the Harbor Freeway.

Police had begun chasing a blue sedan on the freeway for an undisclosed crime. When the sedan reached the off-ramp, it spun into a pole, and the driver and passenger leaped out and ran.

The passenger was hit several times as he exchanged fire with officers near the corner of Figueroa and 6th streets. He was listed in critical condition at County-USC Medical Center.

No officers and no bystanders on the busy downtown streets were injured, police said.

The sedan’s driver was able to elude officers briefly by posing as a bystander, said an employee in a bank building overlooking Figueroa and 6th streets.

He “ran out of the (officers’) sight, then just stopped,” said the 36-year-old woman, who watched from a ninth-floor window in the Sanwa Bank Plaza Building. “He started talking to some guy in a blue baseball cap. He was just standing there on the sidewalk, acting like he was innocent. The police completely missed him.”

Moments later, a block up Figueroa, the same man apparently tried to commandeer a car belonging to an elderly couple. “He wasn’t successful,” said Los Angeles Police Lt. William Hall, supervisor of the department’s officer-involved shooting investigations. “The suspect then fired at the couple’s car as it drove off.”

The gunman then threatened a man driving a gray Chevrolet pickup truck, police said, and ordered him out of the truck. The driver alerted police, who began the second chase.

At speeds approaching 60 m.p.h., the truck and police cars went as far north as Elysian Park and then south to the Santa Monica Freeway.

As the stolen truck slowed on South Hooper Avenue, southeast of downtown, the man put the gun to his head and fired. Officers waiting for homicide investigators handcuffed the dead man to the steering wheel of the stolen truck.