Boy, 11, Swipes Ambulance, Leads Officers on Chase

An 11-year-old boy known for knocking women off their electric golf carts was in Juvenile Hall on Tuesday after stealing a paramedic ambulance that was on an emergency call and leading authorities on a 90-minute chase through several desert communities.

The Cathedral City ambulance crew had responded to a medical aid call Monday evening and when they went back to their idling ambulance to get a gurney, “there was no gurney. There was no ambulance,” Fire Battalion Chief Doug Brown said.

Neighborhood youngsters identified the thief--known to local authorities for his penchant for mischief--but they weren’t sure what direction he had headed. A California Highway Patrol helicopter was drafted for the hunt.

After several minutes, Cathedral City police got a report of an ambulance sideswiping another vehicle. Side-view mirrors got tangled but there was no major damage and the ambulance never stopped, witnesses said.

“A half-hour later, a lady in Rancho Mirage called us to say she saw a little-bitty kid driving one of our vehicles,” Brown said. “She was smart enough to get the license plate number, but there weren’t too many ambulances being driven around by kids.”

The boy’s legal guardian--his grandmother--was contacted by the Fire Department and pleaded on the dispatcher’s radio for the boy to stop. “She asked him to pull over and call us on the cell phone in the unit, so we could come get him,” Brown said. The boy didn’t respond.

For 90 minutes, the boy drove through the nearby towns of Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert, apparently never activating the red lights or siren on the $70,000 vehicle. He eluded capture by hiding behind stores. Law enforcement agencies throughout the Coachella Valley were put on alert.

A Riverside County sheriff’s deputy who had been monitoring the hunt saw the boy in Palm Desert and turned on his patrol car’s lights and siren.

The boy continued, sometimes speeding up to 45 m.p.h. “It was like he thought, ‘Maybe they’ll stop following me,’ ” Sgt. John Killen said. “It’s hard to tell what’s going on in an 11-year-old’s mind when doing something like this.”

Five minutes later, the boy found himself trapped in the construction zone of a washed-out road and gave up. “A very brazen attitude was perceived by our deputy,” Killen said. “It was like, ‘Yeah, I did it. So what?’ ”

The youngster was turned over to Cathedral City police, and then to Riverside County juvenile authorities in Indio, for investigation of auto theft, hit-and-run driving and delaying fire personnel, Capt. Robert Ohlemann said.

Meanwhile, another ambulance took over the original medical emergency call, regarding a man complaining of chest pains. Despite the 20-minute delay, Brown said, the patient was not in a life-threatening situation.

Brown called the episode “the craziest hour and a half of my life,” and said he hopes authorities will throw the book at the 11-year-old. He has an extensive record for mischief, including knocking women off golf carts, Brown said.

“We’re going for the max,” Brown said. “This was insane.

“We were lucky he didn’t hit or kill someone, or kill himself, or total the vehicle,” Brown said. “The damage was extremely minor--amazing, for all the reports we were hearing of near-misses and possible hit-and-runs.”