2 Fences Are 1 Too Many for Fugitive

A man suspected of robbing a Lake Forest bank Wednesday morning didn’t stop when police began chasing him on the freeway, or when they sent a helicopter and half a dozen more patrol cars to tail him into Los Angeles County and back.

He didn’t stop when the front right tire of his car blew out, finally causing it to stall in a lopsided, smoky heap on the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim.

Instead, the 42-year-old man, identified by FBI agents as Juan Lemond Taylor, leaped a concrete median, darted through oncoming freeway traffic and clumsily vaulted a chain-link fence, incurring a fall that sent a flurry of cash into the air.

That stopped him. For a minute.

“He was trying to grab the money. . . . He made like four stabs at it,” said Fullerton Police Lt. Jeff Roop, whose department was one of five involved in the chase. “It was like he was torn between the money and escape. It was classic.”

Scooping up as much of the cash as he could, Taylor then raced toward the freeway onramp at Brookhurst Street, only to encounter another fence, police said. A swarm of officers arrested him there, about 11:30 a.m.

“That second fence, he just couldn’t make it,” Roop said. “He was tired and the money was everywhere by then anyway.”

FBI spokesman John Hoos said Taylor is a possible suspect in two other recent bank robberies, one at a Wells Fargo branch on Main Street in Santa Ana on Oct. 18, the other at a Wells Fargo on Rockfield Boulevard in Lake Forest Oct. 30.

Wednesday’s robbery occurred at California Federal Bank on El Toro Road about 10 a.m., when a man with a knit hat pulled down over his eyebrows approached one of the bank’s tellers and demanded money.

No one was hurt, said the bank’s executive vice president, Jim Hurley.

“A very good portion of the money has been recovered,” said Hurley, who wouldn’t say how much cash was taken.

Wednesday’s pursuit, which was broadcast live by several television stations, involved Orange County and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and officers from the California Highway Patrol and Long Beach, Fullerton and Anaheim police departments.