High-Speed Police Chase Ends in Crash; Four Injured : Law enforcement: The pursuit reaches speeds of 80 m.p.h. before a head-on collision stopped it. The car was reported stolen.

Three people fleeing from police in a stolen car at about 80 m.p.h. crashed head-on into another car Wednesday, injuring themselves and the other driver.

The chase began after Westminster police in an unmarked car checked the license plate numbers of a van and a Buick traveling west on the Riverside Freeway at Weir Canyon Road and learned that both vehicles had been reported stolen in Norwalk, Anaheim Police Sgt. Richard Buchholz said.

The officers put out a countywide call for help to which several police cars from Anaheim and Placentia responded. But when identifiable police cars arrived, the suspects got off the freeway and drove in different directions, police said.

Placentia officers followed the van, which was traveling with the flow of traffic into Anaheim, where the suspects were forced to stop in the 2900 block of East Frontera Street after turning into the driveway of an apartment complex that was blocked by a metal chain. No one was injured.

But the two men and a woman in the Buick led police on a high-speed chase. The car left the freeway at Glassell Street and then re-entered it eastbound, when about two pounds of marijuana were thrown out of the car window at two different locations, police said.

They exited again at Tustin Avenue and sped south to Collins Avenue, where they began driving at 80 m.p.h. into oncoming traffic, said Anaheim Sgt. Larry Kurtz.

Driving wildly, the driver clipped the left tail light of a flatbed truck, smashed the left rear side of a Honda Accord and crashed head-on into a white Nissan Stanza.

Finally, the fleeing car hit a metal post at 500 W. Collins Ave. and came to a stop, partly on the railroad tracks.

The woman driving the Nissan suffered moderate injuries and was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Orange and later transferred in stable condition to San Antonio Hospital in Upland, according to a spokeswoman at St. Joseph. The suspects were taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange and Western Medical Center-Santa Ana.

“Vehicles were strewn about the highway, and people were being carried away by ambulances,” said Detective Sgt. Barry Weinstein of the Orange Police Department.

Bernardo Juarez, 35, a landscaper who was driving the truck that was only slightly damaged, said, “The car was coming right at me in the right lane. I swerved to avoid him and he hit the back of my truck.”

Arsa Rostom, 58, a local store owner who saw the crash, said, “It was like a bullet. And then boom, smoke was coming out all over the place. It was a big accident. One of the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

Weinstein said that police, in deciding whether to engage in high-speed chases, “balance public safety with effective law enforcement.” He said normally if it is a busy time of day or there is a potential for citizens to be injured, the pursuit is abandoned. But added, “We also have to weigh the severity of the crime” of which those being followed are suspected.

Arrested were Tony Rivas, 32, of Long Beach, Stella Carrasco, 20, of Los Angeles County, and Jose Cruz, 20, David Vasquez, 32, Carlos Rosales, 23, and Celia Sally Rodriguez, 38, all of Norwalk.

Cruz, Rivas and Carrasco were in the car while Vasquez, Rosales and Rodriguez were in the van, according to police. All were being held at Anaheim City Jail and bail had not been determined, authorities said.