Woman Arrested After 4-Hour Chase

Of the numerous charges that Helen Freeman will probably face after allegedly leading police on a four-hour chase in a stolen car Thursday morning, speeding won’t be one of them.

Freeman never exceeded 50 mph and at times drove only 10 mph during the chase that began in downtown Los Angeles and ended 133 miles later in Ventura, police said.

Three police cars and a helicopter followed Freeman, 33, of Los Angeles, on what amounted to a grand tour of Los Angeles and Ventura County’s freeway systems, passing through more than a dozen cities.

“That’s not slow speed, that’s not high speed, it’s a kind of middle speed kind of pursuit,” said Lt. Richard Ackerman of the Los Angeles Police Department. “Every [chase] is a little different from other ones; this was a little more different than most.”

The chase began about 12:15 a.m. when police spotted Freeman at the wheel of a Nissan 240 SX driving in a Spring Street bus lane.

After running the car’s license plate and discovering it had been reported stolen in Pomona, officers attempted to pull the car over. But Freeman took off--sort of, authorities said.

She first drove on a relatively slow, circuitous route on surface streets throughout downtown Los Angeles before deciding to hit the Hollywood Freeway at Alvarado Street, Ackerman said.

“It was like a snake, all over,” he said.

From the Hollywood Freeway, it was on to the Pasadena Freeway, where Freeman took Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena north to the Foothill Freeway, police said.

Heading eastbound, police said, she looped back onto the San Bernardino Freeway, headed back toward downtown Los Angeles and then turned northbound on the San Gabriel River Freeway.

Sometime later, the suspect turned westbound on the Foothill Freeway. Eventually, she exited at California 134, finally ending up on the Ventura Freeway heading toward Ventura County, police said.

One of the pursuing police cars dropped out of the chase at Wendy Drive in Thousand Oaks because of engine trouble, but Freeman continued on toward Ventura at 10 mph to 30 mph, according to police.

Finally, the air was let out of the odyssey shortly before 4:30 a.m. when an officer from the California Highway Patrol’s Ventura office laid a “spike strip” across the freeway near the east Main Street intersection.

The vehicle sustained three flat tires, and Freeman was taken into custody without incident.

“I didn’t take the car, my friend did,” Ackerman said Freeman told police, without explaining why she didn’t stop.

She was booked on suspicion of driving a vehicle without the owner’s consent and a felony count of evading police, Ackerman said.