Bank Robbery Suspect Dies in Shootout With Deputies : Chase: Man leads officers along Interstate 5 to semirural Orange County area, stops his car and starts firing. No one else is injured.

A suspected bank robber was shot to death by Orange County sheriff’s deputies after a brief high-speed freeway chase and an exchange of gunfire Friday.

Deputies followed the unidentified man south on Interstate 5 until he left the freeway at San Juan Capistrano, stopped his car on a semirural road and fired as three patrol cars converged on him, authorities said.

“He just jumped out of his car and started firing,” said Angel Segura, who had followed the chase after the vehicles passed him on the freeway. “He and those policemen were maybe 10 or 20 feet from each other.

“He just kept shooting at (the deputies) until he got shot,” Segura said. “It was kind of horrible.”

No deputies or bystanders were hurt in the gun battle, in which at least 10 shots were fired, shattering the windshield of a patrol car, according to sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Richard Olson.

The gunman is believed to have robbed a Hawthorne Savings Bank in Laguna Hills, about five miles away, shortly before the 2 p.m. shootout.

FBI spokesman David Stuck said a stocky, bearded man wearing a hard hat and construction clothes entered the bank about 1:30 p.m. and passed a note to tellers demanding money.

Stuck said no one was hurt during the robbery. As the man left in a white Buick with an undisclosed amount of money, witnesses wrote down the car’s license plate number and called the sheriff’s office.

Just south of the La Paz Road exit on I-5, a sheriff’s deputy saw the car and followed, trying not to be seen, authorities said. Waiting for a backup unit to arrive, the lone officer stayed close as the suspect’s car got off at Crown Valley Parkway and immediately got back on the freeway.

When the second unit arrived, “they turned on their lights and he sped off,” Olson said. The chase reached 90 m.p.h. and lasted about four miles, until the man got off the freeway at Junipera Serra Road.

The man shot at the two patrol cars converging on him, and deputies returned fire as a third patrol car arrived, Olson said.

“All I can tell you is that (the suspect’s) gun was empty,” Olson said.

The weapon, identified by Olson as a Browning 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, carries more than 10 rounds of ammunition.