Man Leads Police on Chase, Is Shot : Crime: Witnesses say driver of stolen car tried to run down Huntington Beach motorcycle officer, He is hit in shoulder.

A motorcycle officer shot and wounded the driver of a stolen car when the man drove it toward the officer, police said.

The driver, Geoffrey Edmond Flynn, was driving without a rear license plate in a stolen car when he led the police officer on a two-minute chase that ended at 12:27 p.m. in the parking lot of Crest View School, Huntington Beach Police Officer J.B. Hume said.

Flynn, 37, of New Hampshire was taken to UCI Medical Center with a bullet wound in the left shoulder and was reported in stable condition, Hume said. Flynn was arrested on suspicion of assault with deadly weapon and failure to yield to an officer.

The elementary school was closed for spring vacation.

Neighbors said they watched the officer follow Flynn as he made a fast U-turn through the parking lot near the intersection of Lisa Lane and Sterling Avenue. The officer then stopped his motorcycle about six feet in front of the car to block it, they said.

Hume said he did not know what prompted the shooting but that the officer fired five or six shots. Most of the bullets struck the driver’s-side window, he said. A witness to the shooting, Kevin Rhodes, 19, said the officer fired after Flynn drove toward the motorcycle.

“I thought he (Flynn) was going to run him over,” said Rhodes, whose back yard faces the parking lot. “The cop did everything he should have done.”

Another witness, Kurt Llewellyn, 24, said that the officer had earlier tried to pull the driver over at Beach Boulevard and Taylor Drive but that Flynn tried to steer the car into the officer’s motorcycle.

“It looked like he hit the motorcycle and then took off down the street,” Llewellyn said.

Flynn drove north on Lisa Lane before realizing the street ended with a parking lot, “the biggest oops of his life,” Hume said. Flynn had made a U-turn to return to the street when the shooting occurred.

Leah Williams, 17, said she was skate-boarding in the school’s hallways when she saw the officer “get off his bike and reach for his gun.”

“I started running because I didn’t want to get hurt,” she said. When she looked again, “he had the guy on his hands and knees, and the officer was standing over him.”

Craig Emmert, 31, another witness, said he heard Flynn scream after crawling out of the car.

“ ‘You didn’t have to shoot me, man! Why did you shoot me?’ ” Emmert said Flynn said.

Police said the car had been reported stolen in Tracy, Calif.