2 Arrested After Assault, 140-M.P.H. Freeway Chase

A woman was followed home and sexually assaulted at gunpoint Wednesday night by two men wearing ski masks who fled with her car and led authorities on a freeway chase that reached 140 m.p.h. before they were captured, authorities said.

After a race on the San Diego Freeway, followed by a pursuit on foot, one suspect was arrested shortly after the car merged onto the Garden Grove Freeway.

The second man was later captured at the drive-in lane of a restaurant on Valley View Street in Buena Park. Neither suspect had been identified by late Wednesday.

The woman was sexually assaulted at her home near the intersection of Eastbluff Drive and Jamboree Road, according to police.

Police said the men, both wearing dark clothes, threatened the woman with a handgun and assaulted her before locking her in a closet. They also took the woman’s bank ATM card with her personal identification number.

Police said one assailant left in the woman’s white 1993 Lexus 400 coupe, which has a personalized license plate.

About 10 p.m., after Orange County radio dispatchers broadcast a description of the vehicle, Santa Ana Police Sgt. Paul Gonsalves said he had a hunch that the attackers might be heading north on the San Diego Freeway, so he set up his marked vehicle on the freeway shoulder near Harbor Boulevard.

‘I saw the vehicle go by and I followed it,” Gonsalves said.

The Lexus was traveling north on the freeway at 75 to 80 m.p.h. as Gonsalves began his pursuit, then accelerated to 130 to 140 m.p.h., the officer said.

Units from the California Highway Patrol, Newport Beach, Westminster and Garden Grove police departments joined the pursuit.

Near the intersection of the Garden Grove Freeway and the San Diego Freeway, the Lexus crashed into a center divider south of Seal Beach Boulevard.

“He lost control of the vehicle coming around the turn” in the car-pool lane, Gonsalves said. “It was a safe pursuit,” he said, as other officers blocked all of the lanes behind the chase. The chase snarled traffic for miles, and police helicopters with spotlights circled above.

The driver fled on foot but was soon arrested.

Officers searched beneath a freeway and a flood-control channel for the second suspect.

“He got over a fence and gave up as we ordered him to stop,” said Newport Beach Officer Tom Weizoerick, who was driving a K-9 unit. No shots were fired.