High-Speed Chase of Suspect in Hijacked Cab Ends With Arrest : Crime: Taxi driver in Bakersfield area foiled holdup attempt and escaped vehicle. Pursuit ends more than 100 miles away in Boyle Heights.

A would-be robber commandeered a taxi in Kern County and led law enforcement officers on a chase for more than 100 miles Tuesday before he was apprehended nearly two hours later in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles, authorities said.

California Highway Patrol officers arrested Charles Edward Beckner shortly after 5 p.m. in the 3200 block of East Washington Boulevard. As officers escorted the young man, dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, through a swarm of news reporters and a jeering crowd of bystanders, someone asked him:

“Why didn’t you stop sooner?”

Glaring defiantly at the crowd, Beckner responded with obscenities directed at police.

Beckner, from the San Diego area, and Scott Allen Hauerwas, 26, attempted to rob a Yellow Cab driver at the intersection of Stockdale Highway and Interstate 5 in a rural area 15 to 20 miles west of Bakersfield, said Kern County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Jim Sida. Company officials identified the driver as Mark McAdoo, 31, of Bakersfield.

One of the suspects pulled a knife and held it to McAdoo’s throat, Sida said. The driver hit the accelerator, then the brakes, forcing the suspect with the knife to lunge forward and allowing the driver to escape from the car, the commander said.

Beckner and Hauerwas then fled in the taxi, and deputies took up the chase after seeing the fast-moving taxi, Sida said. The taxi spun out at one point after deputies tried to force it from the road, and Hauerwas jumped out and tried to run away. He was arrested, but Beckner was able to speed away south on I-5.

Deputies who had forced the spin-out were unable to follow the taxi because their patrol car inexplicably caught fire, Sida said.

CHP officers took over the pursuit at Ft. Tejon, about five miles north of the Los Angeles County line, and helicopter-borne television cameras were soon broadcasting the chase live, the second time in six weeks cameras had followed such a freeway drama.

A suspected murderer, Darren Michael Stroh, 22, was shot and killed by CHP officers on Jan. 3 after he had sped more than 300 miles to Westminster from Merced County where he allegedly had shot to death a good Samaritan motorist.

Beckner sometimes reached speeds of about 100 m.p.h. on I-5. He left the freeway at 4th Street in Boyle Heights and worked his way south to Washington Boulevard, where he eventually turned into a dead-end alley and was arrested.

Sida said Beckner and Hauerwas were booked for investigation of robbery and auto theft.