LOS ANGELES (KABC) — A high-speed pursuit of a grand theft suspect ended in a deadly crash when the driver slammed into the back of a dump truck on Friday morning on the 210 Freeway in La Crescenta.
The ongoing investigation into the deadly crash is causing a traffic mess on the 210 Freeway eastbound in the Montrose area. Authorities have been working to remove debris from the freeway and are slowly reopening the eastbound lanes. Meanwhile, traffic in the area was backed up for miles.
The chase through the San Fernando Valley began just before 11 a.m. when authorities responded to a radio call of a grand theft in progress at a Target store in Camarillo, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.
The high-speed pursuit of the black hatchback made its way into Los Angeles on the 118 Freeway, moving onto surface streets before returning to the freeway and reaching speeds over more than 100 mph.
“He was driving on the shoulder extremely erratically, passing traffic, passing vehicles,” a witness told ABC7.
The witness said that based on how fast the suspect was driving, he knew it would turn out for the worst if the suspect didn’t take his foot off the gas.
As the dangerous pursuit continued on the eastbound 210 Freeway in the Montrose area, the suspect suddenly smacked into the backend of a moving dump truck near the Ocean View onramp, and the mangled car came to a stop in the middle of the lanes.
“The crash occurred when the suspect vehicle hit the back of a dump truck, at which time the driver of the vehicle lost control, and the pursuit came to an end,” said Sgt. Dan Keene with California Highway Patrol.
“It sounded like a sonic boom or something. It was very loud and, without even seeing the collision, you knew it was going to be bad just by the way it sounded,” the witness said. “I saw the cops trailing him, I saw him hit the back of the truck, and then that’s when I got out of my car and I saw CHP, you know, doing CPR and just kind of clearing the scene.”
Officers approached the wreckage of the car on foot as all eastbound traffic was stopped. They were later joined by responding firefighter-paramedics, who attended to the gravely injured suspect.
A significant amount of blood was visible on the ground. The unidentified driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the dump truck was rattled by the deadly collision but was not hurt.
CHP officials said that with the speeds the suspect was topping during the pursuit, it could have ended a lot worse.
“This was only a two-vehicle crash at this point,” Keene said. “The driver of the dump truck was uninjured.”
Copyright © 2025 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
