Chase Ends on Runway

A truck driver fleeing a fender-bender Friday drove his big rig through a fence and onto a main runway at Long Beach Municipal Airport, overturned the truck while evading sheriff’s deputies and clambered out of the cab naked, officers said.

The man was apprehended quickly and taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation, but the overturned rig and its spilled load of bathroom fixtures blocked the runway for several hours, forcing large planes to land at alternate airports.

Officers said the man, about 40 but not immediately identified, was hauling the fixtures down Lakewood Boulevard in Long Beach about 3 p.m. when a bystander saw his truck sideswipe another vehicle at Carson Street.

The bystander flagged down a sheriff’s patrol car, which gave chase.

“When the deputies pulled alongside, he stopped, leaned out the window and told them his truck was going to blow up,” said Deputy Richard Weston, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

“Then he took off again, south on Lakewood. They followed him, not quite sure what they had.”

Deputies said the man, apparently disrobing as he drove, suddenly turned right, through a fence and onto the main runway at the airport. The patrol car followed.

“Then he started making some erratic moves, turning sharply toward the deputies,” Weston said. “On one of those moves, the truck overturned.”

Officers said that after crawling out of the cab without any clothes on, the man surrendered meekly.

The deputies who arrested him put out a small fire in the truck’s cab. What caused the fire was not immediately clear, Weston said.

Because of the man’s warning that the truck was about to blow up, a sheriff’s bomb squad unit was brought in.

Shortly before 7 p.m., after it had been ascertained that there was no bomb and that the truck was safe, two tow trucks righted the big rig and dragged it away.

Skip-loaders were brought in to scoop up the shattered porcelain fixtures and the airport resumed normal operations.