1 Driver Held, Another Sought After Pursuits

Two high-speed freeway pursuits Monday night--one in Thousand Oaks and the other in Ventura--ended with one man in police custody, while the other suspect remained at large.

In the first incident, sheriff’s deputies began chasing a man about 7:45 p.m. on Lynn Road near the Ventura Freeway intersection. Deputies had information that he was wanted by the Los Angeles Police Department in a Chatsworth child-custody dispute, said Sgt. Will Hammer.

Most of the 10-minute chase occurred on surface streets, although at one point the man, at the wheel of a white Chevrolet Astrovan, drove north in the southbound lanes of the Ventura Freeway between Lynn and Borchard roads, Hammer said.

The driver evaded police before ditching the vehicle in a Newbury Park residential neighborhood and fleeing on foot, Hammer said.

By 9:30 p.m., deputies--who had been using dogs and a helicopter--called off their search for the man, whom they did not identify. He is now wanted on a felony charge of evading a police officer.

The man had left his three children at a Ventura County motel, and all were reported safe, Hammer said.

The second chase began about 8:30 p.m. south of Ventura on Harbor Boulevard when California Highway Patrol officers attempted to pull over a 1989 Plymouth van believed stolen, a CHP spokesman said.

The driver took off northbound on Harbor Boulevard at up to 90 mph. He eluded police--at one point driving through the parking lot of a West Ventura strip mall--before heading north on the Ventura Freeway at high speed, the spokesman said.

He was stopped and arrested at El Capitan State Beach north of Santa Barbara at 9:12 p.m. after officers laid a “spike strip” across the freeway. Authorities had not released his identity late Monday.