Mustang used in wild police pursuit was a rental, officials say
A Ford Mustang convertible led police on a chase from the Cerritos area into downtown Los Angeles and eventually to Hollywood.
Authorities have identified two men who they say led police on a wild chase across the streets of Los Angeles on Thursday.
The driver was identified as Herschel Reynolds, 20, and his passenger was Isaiah Young, 19, sheriff’s Deputy Tina Schrader said. Both men are residents of L.A. and were later booked into the Los Angeles County Jail.
Young was being held in lieu of $80,000 bail, while Reynolds was held on $50,000 bail, according to jail records.
Authorities said the Mustang they drove was a rental.
They face charges in connection with a burglary in Cerritos but are likely to be charged with additional crimes related to the chase.
The chase ended in a South Los Angeles neigborhood where residents said the pair lived.
Resident Narvie Lee Richmond told KNBC-TV that residents came out of their homes to help protect the suspects before police arrived. He said he told them to cooperate with police and surrender peacefully, which they did.
“I didn’t want to see no young black men getting killed,” Richmond told the station.
The chase lasted about two hours and began with a report of a residential burglary in Cerritos at 1:24 p.m., after a rainstorm moved into Southern California. The burglars fled the home on Charlwood Street before deputies arrived, but neighbors were able to describe the suspects’ vehicle, a Ford Mustang convertible. Within minutes, a sheriff’s helicopter spotted the car on the westbound 91 Freeway.
Authorities said roads were too wet and the Mustang was weaving through traffic too dangerously for sheriff’s deputies to follow it, so they relied on a helicopter to monitor the vehicle instead.
But when the Mustang reached the interchange of the 110 and 101 freeways in downtown L.A., the California Highway Patrol took up the chase. The Mustang got off at Sunset Boulevard. By that time it had already rear-ended one vehicle, and the passenger had stood up and waved at other drivers.
On Sunset, with no police behind them, the driver began doing doughnuts in the middle of the street, spinning across all lanes of traffic and forcing other cars to stop. The car then moved onto Hollywood Boulevard, where countless tourists got to see the Mustang drive against traffic by the TCL Chinese Theatre and Hollywood Walk of Fame.
From there, it was up to the Hollywood Hills, where the Mustang drove into opposing traffic lanes around blind curves, narrowly missing oncoming traffic, and fishtailed on rain-slick roads.
Without any vehicles close behind, the driver drove back through Hollywood’s tourist district and onto the freeway, where it was almost trapped by a TMZ tour bus that cut off its path as it tried to split two lanes.
TMZ addressed the run-in with the Mustang on its website.
“We’ve spoken to the driver ... who says he never even saw the chase coming behind him. He was innocently changing lanes and ended up cutting off the suspects,” TMZ said.
For more breaking news in California, follow @JosephSerna and @LACrimes.
Times staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.
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