Chase Suspect Was a Parolee, Police Say : Crime: Stopped for wrong-way driving, he led officers on 150-mile pursuit because he feared return to prison. He now faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon.

When a Burbank park ranger tried to stop Fernando Jaime Ramos for driving the wrong direction on a one-way street, Ramos feared the ranger would write him a ticket and discover he was smoking marijuana, a violation he felt might jeopardize his parole and send him back to prison for life, police said Tuesday.

That’s why the 25-year-old Arleta resident tried to run down the ranger and sped off, police said--beginning the epic 2 1/2-hour, 150-mile police pursuit across Los Angeles that dominated much of the area’s television viewing Monday night.

Actually, there was no point in running away, ranger Brandon Ward said Tuesday.

He never intended to give Ramos a ticket.

“I was just going to advise him” that he was driving the wrong way, Ward told reporters. “A lot of people make that mistake.”

Ramos is being held without bail on suspicion of felonies committed during the chase--assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon--that do raise the possibility of his returning to prison for a long time.

According to police, Ramos gravely compounded his error by not only trying to run down the ranger but also by trying to drive his truck into pursuing police officers four times, as well as trying to hit residents who came out to watch as the chase, broadcast live by several television stations, passed through their neighborhoods.

Ramos’ family said he feared he would spend 25 years in prison if he was caught violating his parole, apparently a mistake on his part.

“Based on what I know, he wasn’t looking at any 25-to-life sentence for anything other than what he did” after he fled, Burbank Police Lt. Larry Koch said.

What he did, police say, was lead a retinue of police cars on a chase that looped through most of the Los Angeles area, barreling along surface streets from North Hollywood to Beverly Hills, Santa Monica to Long Beach, Venice to Vernon, where officers finally stopped Ramos by ramming his truck, causing it to fishtail into an industrial building.

Ramos’ mother, Leticia Ramos, and other relatives said Ramos refused to surrender--although he was clearly incapable of escaping in the slow and damaged truck--because he had been paroled from prison four months ago and was told he would be imprisoned for life if he was arrested again.