Countywide : Elderly Driver Held After 4-County Chase
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An elderly man led California Highway Patrol officers on a chase across four Southern California counties Tuesday, finally being arrested only because southbound Interstate 5 near Oceanside was closed because a would-be suicide was threatening to jump from an overpass, officials said.
Officials said the chase began shortly after 1 p.m. in Ventura County, where CHP officers attempted to stop a white Ford Taurus said to be traveling in excess of 100 m.p.h.
Beginning eastbound on U.S. 101 in Oxnard, the chase proceeded south on the the San Diego Freeway through Los Angeles County, then into Orange County and finally into San Diego County along Interstate 5, said CHP Officer Tito Gomez.
Were it not for the other emergency, which closed Interstate 5 from Mission Avenue in Oceanside to a rest area near Camp Pendleton, the chase would have continued, said CHP Officer Phil Konstantin.
The unidentified driver of the Taurus, believed to be in his 70s, could go no farther, “only because there was nowhere else to go--he, like everyone else, was at a standstill,” Konstantin said. Officers apprehended him at 3:37 p.m.
No one was injured in the chase.
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