Freeway Chase Leads to Standoff

A tense standoff continued past midnight between police and a gun-wielding robber who had led officers on a high-speed, 4 1/2-hour chase across freeways filled with rush-hour traffic Wednesday before barricading himself in his van on the San Bernardino Freeway in Baldwin Park.

The standoff began at 7:50 p.m. when the man apparently ran out of gas on the eastbound San Bernardino. The CHP closed all lanes in both directions as officers tried for more than four hours to persuade the man to surrender.

The chase had started after the man pointed a handgun at a customer at a Mobil service station in Baldwin Park and demanded that she use her credit card to fill up his van, said Sam Abu Lashin, 43, the station’s owner.

“I told my brother-in-law who was running the cash register to give him a fill-up and let him leave,” Lashin said. “He took the fill-up and left the lady alone.”

The man then pointed the gun at customers, said Lashin, who estimated that about a dozen people were at the station.

“He didn’t take any money,” Lashin said. “He just wanted gas.”

After filling his tank with $48 worth of premium, the man fired his gun into the air, Lashin said.

“That was to frighten everybody,” he said. “He then took off. I then used our panic button to call the cops. It took him about five minutes to fill his tank, but no cops came while he was here.”

When police arrived at about 3:20 p.m., Lashin said, he gave them the van’s license number and officers quickly located the vehicle and began chasing it.

The driver allegedly fired into the air and at least once at officers as he traveled continuously in a triangular route across the San Bernardino, 605 and Foothill freeways at speeds in excess of 90 mph at times.

Whenever traffic forced him to slow or stop, the man reportedly brandished his gun, forcing drivers to let him through. During much of the chase the man spoke on a cell phone while driving erratically and narrowly avoiding collisions.

The man talked to his brother, estranged wife and other relatives during the pursuit, said Officer Wendy Moore of the California Highway Patrol.

“He’s talked to several people. At one point he had threatened to kill himself” and also threatened to shoot police or other motorists, Moore said. “He’s going through a divorce, he’s just lost his house.”

The driver came to a stop after apparently running out of gas on the eastbound San Bernardino between Frazier Street and Baldwin Park Boulevard.

A phalanx of police cars lined up across the eastbound lanes, and officers crouched behind their doors, guns trained at the unidentified suspect as the standoff continued. By 8:50 p.m., the man had reportedly tossed his cell phone out the window and had smeared something on the driver’s window to obscure the view.

At about 10:30 p.m., police sent a robot to his passenger door, but it wasn’t clear if the man accepted a cell phone from the robot’s arm. Shortly afterward, however, he appeared to open and close the passenger door several times until the robot was knocked over. He also fired a shot into the air.

CHP officers diverted westbound traffic off the freeway at Baldwin Park Boulevard and eastbound traffic at the 605 Freeway.

As the drama unfolded on television, Lashin said he was glad that no one was hurt.

“Money comes and goes,” he said. “You can’t let someone kill someone for $50. We told him to get all the gas you want. Life is too precious.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.