3 Suspects Lead Police on 20-Minute Street Chase : Crime: A car spotted in Chatsworth after a robbery flees to Valley Village. Two patrol cars crash and the three are eventually arrested.

Three robbery suspects led police on a 20-minute chase through Van Nuys and North Hollywood Thursday, causing two patrol cars to crash before the suspects’ car slammed into a utility pole in Valley Village, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Two men and a woman were arrested.

The chase began about 11 a.m. near Sepulveda Boulevard and Sherman Way in Van Nuys when undercover officers from the Special Investigations Section saw a car that matched the description of one used an hour earlier in an armed robbery at a Chatsworth liquor store, said Capt. Richard Le Garra of the North Hollywood Division.

The SIS officers notified police in a marked patrol car, who tried to stop the suspects’ car, a Honda CRX. The suspects fled, leading police on a high-speed chase through streets in Van Nuys and North Hollywood.

During the chase, one police car crashed near Vanowen Street and Hazeltine Avenue in Van Nuys. Another crashed near Laurel Canyon and Victory boulevards in North Hollywood.

The suspects’ Honda subsequently hit a utility pole at Chandler Boulevard and Bellaire Avenue in Valley Village. Two men fled on foot. Police arrested a woman found in the car. Her identity was not released.

Police surrounded the area and began a house-to-house search, using dogs, for the two suspects.

Tyrone Mitchell, 22, a transient, was arrested about 2 p.m. after police dogs found him hiding in a tree, officers said. Mitchell was uninjured in the crash and was arrested without incident.

The third suspect, whose identity was not released, was captured at 6:20 p.m. after police were contacted by a radio news crew that spotted him near a gas station on the northeast corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Valley Village, Lt. Gary Holden said.

Pete Demetriou, a field reporter for KFWB radio, said he, a television cameraman and a passerby saw a man who fit the suspect’s description walking on Bellaire. Demetriou contacted North Hollywood police and a patrol car was sent to the scene.

The suspect tried to flee into traffic when he saw the officers, but the passerby ran after him into the intersection of Magnolia and Coldwater Canyon and held him, Demetriou said.

Details of the liquor store robbery and the accidents involving the police cars were not immediately available.

Police said no one was seriously injured in either crash, although a woman in a vehicle struck by the patrol car was taken to a nearby hospital. Police declined to disclose the woman’s name or the nature of her injuries.