Bay Area police chase: Suspect bails out of stolen car on fire in California Highway Patrol pursuit
Video posted online Tuesday by California Highway Patrol Golden Gate’s Air Division captures Bay Area cops chasing a suspect driving a car stolen in San Bruno until its tires rolled off in Solano County and the car immolated in Sacramento on Saturday night.
The footage recorded by a camera on CHP Airplane 37 shows the pursuit in one dozen cuts over four-and-a-half minutes documenting CHP Golden Gate’s involvement in the April 22 chase, which begins in the video on I-80 eastbound as the suspect passes the Bayview Avenue exit in Richmond around 11:20 p.m.
The voice in the left audio channel eight seconds in is Air-37 dictating the suspect’s motion to dispatchers responding on the right channel and coordinating with police on the ground dropping a spike strip to puncture the stolen car’s tires.
The suspect continues fleeing at speeds CHP said exceeded 100 miles per hour until the car catches fire on I-5 in Sacramento and they bail out to surrender.
“Unfortunately, even with four flat tires and the vehicle riding on the rims the driver continued to flee,” CHP Golden Gate Air Division wrote in its post.
CHP redacted 12 minutes of its aerial surveillance video recorded between 11:32 and 11:44 p.m., another 11 minutes after the spiked car sparks on the freeway from 12:11 to 12:22 a.m. Sunday and roughly 15 more minutes from 12:23 to 12:38 a.m. that would show the suspect’s progression from I-80 to I-5 until just before their surrender near the Florin Road exit.
The agency said the final minute and 10 seconds of the video are silent because “the flight crew switched to a different channel.”
San Bruno Police continue to investigate.