Officer Shot, 50-Mile Chase Ensues : Crime: A suspect takes a hostage and fires at police during wild pursuit through four counties. He is captured in Santa Ana.

A policeman was shot in Pomona on Thursday morning, and one of the suspects led officers on a 50-mile, bullet-riddled chase across four counties that ended when he fled from a commandeered truck on foot before surrendering to police in a back yard in Santa Ana.

Another suspect was arrested near the home where the policeman was wounded after responding to an unexplained 911 call that police now believe involved an armed robbery. A third suspect was taken into custody when he was cornered near Ontario Airport.

Police sources said the suspect who commandeered the truck has been identified as Regino Deharo Jr., 21. Court records show that a man of the same name and age is a suspected gang member with an extensive police record. The two other suspects have not been identified.

The Pomona policeman, senior Officer Roger Mathews, 51, was reported in fair condition at Long Beach Memorial Hospital on Thursday night. Doctors said a bullet apparently passed through his right forearm and grazed his left thigh.

Mathews was the fourth Southern California police officer shot within three weeks. The three others died. Suspects in those cases are still at large.

Investigators said Thursday’s incident began when Pomona police received a 911 call from a home in the 1100 block of Chelsa Drive. Desk officers said the caller hung up before they could elicit information, so Mathews was sent to the home to determine why the call had been made.

Pomona Police Chief Lloyd Wood said when Mathews arrived at the home, he entered through the open front door. At first believing that there was only one suspect, Mathews chased the man from the home. The suspect was arrested with the help of other officers a few blocks away.

Returning to the home for another look around, Mathews found a second suspect, Wood said.

The chief said that as Mathews was subduing the second suspect, a third suspect burst from a bedroom and shot the policeman.

Disabled by the bullet wound in his arm and unable to draw his pistol, Mathews ran from the house and took refuge beside an unarmed parking control officer, who was crouched behind Mathews’ car, Wood said.

“Roger said he was fully expecting (the gunman) to come around the car and shoot them both,” Wood said.

Instead, the gunman and the second suspect jumped in a car and drove east toward Ontario, where their car broke down near Ontario Airport, police said. The two men ran through a California Highway Patrol parking lot to the offices of an irrigating company.

One of the suspects stole a company truck and later was arrested nearby, police said.

Officers said the third suspect, identified as Deharo, commandeered a pickup at gunpoint and ordered the owner, Bob Moxley of Upland, to head for the San Bernardino Freeway.

As police cars, police helicopters and television helicopters took up the chase, which was carried live on television, the pickup headed east to Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, south on the I-15 to the Riverside Freeway in Riverside County, and west on that freeway into Orange County.

Investigators said the suspect fired repeatedly at the police cars and helicopters, and one car may have been hit. Following safety procedures, the officers did not return fire on the crowded highways. Highway patrolmen credited Moxley’s skilled driving for the lack of accidents as the pickup weaved through traffic with police cars in close pursuit.

Turning off the freeway onto surface streets in Santa Ana, the pickup eventually was trapped in a cul-de-sac. The suspect fled on foot through a residential neighborhood, firing several more shots and clambering over three back-yard fences before throwing down his gun, raising his hands and surrendering as police closed in on the ground and in the air.

All three suspects were taken to Pomona police headquarters for questioning. It was not immediately clear which one was thought to have fired the shot that struck Mathews.

At Long Beach Memorial Hospital, Mathews was reported in good spirits after his ordeal, and doctors said he is expected to recover. When his wife, Carole, arrived at the hospital, she was given a silver ring that doctors had cut off her husband’s hand.

She smiled bravely as she slipped the mangled ring onto her finger.

“Now he has a war story,” she said softly.

Police said the 911 call that sent Mathews to the modest, single-story house on Chelsa Drive came into the Pomona police station at about 9 a.m.

Lalo Marquez, who lives in the house but was away at the time, said the call was made by his 14-year-old brother, Orlando, who was in the house with his 6-year-old sister, Angie, and a cousin, Angelica Molino, when they heard someone trying to break into the home.

Pomona Police Chief Wood said that when a desk officer answered the call, someone in the house hung up the phone. Police said that when they traced the call and called back, someone hung up without saying anything.

After Mathews entered the home and chased out the first suspect, he, along with Detective Skip Herring and another officer, both of whom had arrived moments after Mathews, arrested the man about two blocks from the house.

“Roger said: ‘I’m going back to the house,’ ” Herring recalled later.

While Herring placed the suspect in a police car, Mathews walked back to the home and re-entered it. In the seconds that followed, neighbors heard several gunshots and Mathews staggered out of the house, taking refuge behind his patrol car as the two remaining suspects fled from the house.

Herring said Mathews grabbed the microphone in his car and put out an emergency call:

“I’ve been hit bad!”

Herring, just two blocks away, rushed to the wounded officer’s side. Using the parking control officer’s belt as a tourniquet, Herring stopped the bleeding from the wounded arm.

“He was in good spirits,” Herring said later. “He said: ‘Don’t let them cut my boots off.’ ”

Although police did not provide details, they said it was believed that the children in the house came through the incident unharmed.

Meanwhile, the two suspects who followed Mathews out of the house drove away in a station wagon. Police, alerted by Mathews, quickly gave chase in patrol cars and a helicopter. A few minutes later, the station wagon broke down in Ontario and the suspects took off on foot, dashing through the parking lot of a CHP station.

Inside the station, CHP officers who were monitoring the chase on their police scanners realized that they were at ground zero.

Just around the corner, Raul Gonzalez, a manager at Ewing Irrigation Co., saw two men run into his sales office. They “showed a gun,” he said, and demanded keys to two vehicles.

Gonzalez said he gave the keys to a company pickup truck to the unarmed suspect, who fled with the vehicle. The other suspect, brandishing the handgun, demanded to know who owned the other pickup.

Moxley, a Ewing salesman, said the truck was his, and the suspect later identified as Deharo ordered Moxley behind the wheel.

Ontario Police Officer Mark Ortiz said he and his partner, Cpl. Mark Shadley, were discussing the recent rash of officer-involved shootings when a call came over the radio that another policeman had been shot.

The officers said they were just pulling up to the Ewing Irrigation offices as Moxley’s navy blue pickup roared away.

For the next hour, the two officers were in the midst of the chase that eventually included units from the CHP, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Pomona and Santa Ana police departments.

Ortiz and Shadley said they were often without a clue as to where they were headed as the chase careened along the San Bernardino, I-15, Riverside, Costa Mesa and Garden Grove freeways, sometimes at speeds of up to 90 m.p.h.

“You’ve got a lot of peope in front of you so you’re just following their lead,” said Ortiz, 29, who was behind the wheel. “You just try to be as careful as possible, try not to hurt anyone.”

Because the suspect had a hostage, the officers were especially careful, Ortiz said.

“My main concern was for the guy in the truck,” said Shadley, 34. “A suspect shoots a cop, they’re not going to care about shooting somebody else.”

The most harrowing moments came when the suspect leaned out his window and opened fire, the officers said.

“That’s where you put your seat down to the lowest position and duck,” Ortiz said. “Bullets fly in all sorts of directions.”

As thousands of Southern Californians watched the chase on live television, the pickup left the Garden Grove Freeway at Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove. The truck then went east along Garden Grove Boulevard into Santa Ana.

Once in Santa Ana, the truck ignored red lights as it led police through residential neighborhoods.

Two Irvine Ranch Water District employees, Don Geiser and Dave Saindon, were working beside the road as the pickup headed toward them with police cars in pursuit, said Wayne Wright, a water district supervisor.

“As this truck passes by, they see the passenger lean way out and he points a weapon at them and at the police cars and, ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ he starts shooting at everybody,” Wright said. “They said it was like the movies. They couldn’t believe it.”

Geiser, Saindon and the television audience watched as the truck wriggled through a few more side streets and finally came to a halt at the end of the Manitoba Drive cul-de-sac. As Moxley stepped out of the driver’s side, hands in the air, the suspect leaped out of the passenger’s door and fled, firing several wild shots as he ran. Investigators said three shots were fired in return from a police helicopter.

After climbing over several walls in a futile attempt to escape the hovering helicopters, the suspect threw his gun down and raised his hands in the air, apparently in response to orders from a police bullhorn.

Following further orders, the suspect walked slowly through a gate and lay face-down on the ground beside a home in the 2300 block of South Warbler Street. Two police officers stepped quickly from behind a wall and handcuffed him.

Police said the third suspect was arrested in the Ontario area. Details of that arrest were not available.

Three officers were shot to death while stopping motorists during the last three weeks.

Garden Grove Officer Howard E. Dallies Jr., 36, was slain Tuesday, apparently gunned down by a motorcyclist before Dallies had a chance to draw his weapon. No suspects have been arrested.

Compton Police Officer Kevin Michael Burrell and reserve Officer James Wayne MacDonald were gunned down Feb. 22 after stopping a pickup truck.

Keith Terris Caldwell, 22, was arrested amid widespread publicity last week, but police say they no longer consider him a prime suspect in the execution-style slaying of the two officers. Caldwell was arrested last week in connection with a homicide in October. Police still say he may be connected to the Burrell and MacDonald murders.

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