A driver in a heavily damaged BMW sedan led officers on an hour-long chase through the San Gabriel Valley to Long Beach early Tuesday morning before crashing into the back of a big rig and running across freeway lanes.
It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured in the multiple crashes that occurred over the course of the pursuit.
The driver was wanted for a possible residential burglary in Walnut, according to the LASD Walnut/Diamond Bar station. Los Angeles CHP officers soon took over the chase, which began just after 7:15 a.m.
The chase traveled eastbound through the Irwindale area on the 210 Freeway.
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The driver of the black sedan at times drove on the shoulders of the freeway, speeding dangerously close to other cars.
By 7:47 a.m., the driver had taken the exit ramp and was traveling through El Monte on the westbound 10 Freeway at around 60 miles per hour.
Tinted windows made it difficult to determine who was inside the car, and whether it was one person or multiple people.
The driver at times traveled up to 100 miles per hour on freeways, forcing the CHP to cancel the pursuit and move into monitoring the vehicle's path.
The BMW then made its way onto the southbound 5 freeway.
While trying to maneuver around a car in the leftmost lane by merging onto the shoulder, the driver struck the trunk of another sedan at a high speed, turning that second car completely around on the freeway. The driver of the BMW then sped off from the Commerce area toward the South Gate area, continuing southbound on the 5 Freeway by squeezing past the car and the sidewall of the freeway.
Paramedics may have been called for the driver of that second car, who may have been injured.
Shortly after, the driver tossed something unidentifiable out of the windows, possibly some papers.
A couple of CHP motorcycles continued chasing the BMW driver through to the Paramount area, as that driver sped faster than the flow of traffic and continued weaving in and out of cars.
As the driver traveled through the Santa Fe Springs area, the rear bumper of the BMW began to detach from the rest of the vehicle, with visible damage after the collision with the other car.
The driver exited the 5 Freeway at Firestone, then looped right back around onto the freeway with smoke coming from the rear of the car and two CHP cars in pursuit.
The BMW exited the Freeway again just after 8:15 a.m., traveling southbound briefly on the wrong side of Beach Boulevard.
The car began to tilt to the right slightly as the high speeds and the damage sustained after multiple collisions tore the car apart.
The rear bumper eventually detatched from the car, dragging along as the driver sped down the 91 Freeway. Pieces of metal and other debris trailed behind the vehicle as the bumper slowly shredded on the asphalt before detatching entirely.
The BMW tapped the back of a big rig when it ran into much slower moving traffic on the westbound 91 Freeway, with CHP officers almost catching up with a PIT maneuver that did not succeed. The BMW then sped off again, still westbound on the 91.
The driver then appeared to lose control of the vehicle after passing Downey, with the car fishtailing and colliding with the back of another big rig truck in the Long Beach area.
Two suspects then threw open the doors of the car, fleeing across several lanes of traffic, jumping over the center divider, and leading the foot chase across open lanes on the 91 -- forcing oncoming traffic to break and swerve around them.
Officers caught up, and the two suspects surrendered to the CHP.
