5-Hour Freeway Standoff Ends as Deputy Kills Robbery Suspect

A sheriff’s marksman killed a suspected bank robber in a stolen taxicab Wednesday after a five-hour standoff on the Pomona Freeway that tied up traffic for miles, authorities said.

The man pointed a semiautomatic handgun at deputies after they fired two cans of “cold gas,” an irritant, into the taxi, said Deputy Steve Sciacca.

“A special weapons long rifle shooter who feared for the life of the deputies fired one round, which fatally wounded the suspect,” he said.

At one point in the afternoon, during the tense ordeal, the officers used a robot carrying a telephone to establish communication with the man, whom they identified only as Albert. They described him as a heavyset Latino in his 20s.

Officers said the man stole a taxicab in Los Angeles, held up a Cal Fed bank in Bell Gardens and led police on a televised, 20-mile chase that rolled slowly to a stop on the eastbound Pomona Freeway, in the Whittier Narrows area, when the cab apparently ran out of gas shortly after noon.

A dozen patrol units pulled up about 20 yards behind the disabled taxi. Sheriff’s SWAT team members took positions on three sides of the cab, taking cover behind stopped vehicles and freeway barriers and training their rifles on the cab.

A spiked strip designed to puncture tires was placed across the freeway about 500 yards in front of the cab. Traffic was cleared and the long standoff began.

The California Highway Patrol closed a 10-mile stretch of the Pomona Freeway between the Long Beach and San Gabriel River Freeway, throwing afternoon traffic into a turmoil.

With the arrival of the evening rush hour, the traffic snarls intensified, affecting major routes as far as the Santa Ana Freeway in Orange County and the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena.

Throughout much of the afternoon, officers were frustrated by their inability to communicate with the man, becoming increasingly concerned that he might resort to violence. They said he put on what appeared to be a protective vest and helmet. They said he was heavily armed, with an assault rifle, a handgun and a pipe bomb.

The FBI said a man carrying an assault rifle had burst into the bank at 5740 Florence Ave. about 11:45 a.m. and ordered a teller to put money in a bag he was carrying.

Laura Bosely, a spokeswoman for the FBI, said the man ran from the bank without firing any shots, jumped into a green and orange taxi and sped away. Witnesses immediately alerted Bell Gardens police, who chased the vehicle.

As the chase continued north on the Santa Ana and Long Beach freeways, then east on the Pomona Freeway, CHP units joined the pursuit.

A check with police agencies revealed the cab had been stolen several hours earlier in Los Angeles.

Officers said the chase continued at moderate speeds--50 mph to 60 mph--until the taxi stopped just short of Rosemead Boulevard.

After more than two hours of waiting failed to induce the man to step out of the taxi, a sheriff’s bomb squad van was summoned.

Out from the van rolled a robot--about the size of a large dog--used by bomb squad deputies to inspect suspected explosives.

The radio-controlled device is equipped with a television camera and a hydraulic arm with a clamp on the end that can be moved several feet in any direction.

The officers placed a telephone in the clamp and--trailing several hundred feet of telephone cord--the robot began crawling slowly forward on its four little wheels.

It took several minutes to complete the journey--all of it watched by thousands of local television viewers. The robot extended its arm to the open car window, and the man picked up the phone.

Deputies said conversations with Albert, in English and Spanish, began about 3:45 p.m. and continued for an hour. The content of the conversations was not revealed.

At one point the man threw the phone out the window onto the freeway. The robot retrieved it and handed it back to him.

The shooting occurred about 5 p.m. Deputies originally said it appeared the man shot himself.