Police Return Fire, Wound Driver After Chase

Police opened fire Tuesday night on a man who twice emerged from his car firing at them following a chase that began in Anaheim.

The suspect was seriously wounded, but no police officers were hit.

The incident began about 8 p.m. when an Anaheim police officer tried to make a traffic stop at Ball Road and Holder Street. The driver refused to stop, leading police on a five-minute chase that continued west on Lincoln Avenue and north on Moody Street into Cypress, police said.

Near La Salle Street and Merten Avenue, the driver stopped, and police, by then including officers from La Palma, Anaheim and Cypress, ordered him to put his hands out the window, said witness Kyle Conners, who lives nearby.

Instead, the driver got out of the silver Ford Escort firing a gun, police and Conners said.

Police returned fire, which “knocked him back into the car,” Conners said. “At that point, I thought he was dead. . . . All you heard was the scattering of gunfire.”

Police then yelled at the man to throw the gun out of the car, said Conners, who was 15 to 20 feet away.

But the driver again got out of the car firing at police. Officers shot him in the abdomen and chest and several times in the legs.

Teenagers were in the street when the gunfire erupted, and some neighbors questioned why police fired with people so near.

“That’s probably a valid concern,” Cypress Police Lt. John Schaefer said. “The officers were trying to disable the suspect.

“It’s a very unfortunate situation, but the suspect was getting out of the car firing numerous rounds.”

Lisa Forman, 26, said her relatives, ages 16 and 17, were outside when the shooting erupted.

“He could have killed so many people,” she said. Forman said she sent the teenagers and an 8-year-old upstairs and then she and her mother went outside.

“All we could smell was gunpowder,” she said. The man, who has not been identified, was in serious condition and undergoing surgery late Tuesday night at UCI Medical Center in Orange.