Docs Explain How 3 Suspects Stole CHP Cruisers

Three CHP vehicle thefts took place within five months of each other

When three California Highway Patrol (CHP) cruisers were stolen in separate incidents by suspects in handcuffs, one question arose: What happened?

All three vehicles were taken within a five-month period — two of them within three days of each other. Fourteen months after the first theft, the CHP revealed new answers Friday as to how the thefts happened through a California Public Records Act request from NBC 7.

In the first case, Casaundra Lane was arrested on suspicion of stealing a car near Mission Bay Park at Interstate 5 on Nov. 7, 2014. The officer handcuffed her and placed her in his patrol cruiser’s back seat. While the officer, who happened to be off-duty at the time, was filling out his paperwork outside of the vehicle, Lane climbed into the front seat and drove away.

The theft happened because, according to the CHP, the cruiser didn’t have a protective screen between the passenger section and the driver’s area.

According to CHP Officer Ricardo Rodriquez, the officer didn’t follow policy when driving a cruiser with no protective screen.

The arrest reports reveal no details about what happened to their stolen vehicle during the resulting chase, but Lane was ultimately taken into custody with the help of San Diego Police officers.

Additional documents include extraordinary details about the other two cases. Both involved men who had allegedly been drinking, smelling of alcohol with red, watery eyes. Both men were handcuffed, seated in the front seat of the cruiser and escaped the same way.

The second case happened on March 10, 2015, in Rainbow off Interstate 15. After colliding with a truck and trailer, Aaron Teruya stopped on the freeway shoulder and was arrested on suspicion of DUI. The CHP officer put the handcuffed suspect in the passenger seat of his SUV.

As the CHP report stated, Teruya “slid both hands underneath his legs” to bring his hands in front of him, jumped in the driver’s seat and sped away. The officer quickly climbed into a tow truck and took off after his car.

Though the cruiser had GPS that officials could track, the chase went on for an hour and 50 minutes. It ended 10 miles from where it began when Teruya veered onto a dirt road east of Gird Road and crashed into a rock. No one was hurt, but the cruiser had moderate damage.

In describing the third theft on March 13, 2015, the CHP report reads like a page from a “Fast and Furious” movie script. Witnesses along the route said they saw the CHP vehicle going 91 miles an hour and driving the wrong way on a one-way street.

It began when John Perryman III allegedly tried to run from the scene of a crash in Westminter in the Los Angeles area. CHP officers caught him, put him in handcuffs and sat him in the passenger seat of their patrol vehicle.

Like Teruya, Perryman maneuvered his hands to the front of his body and took off in the CHP car, the arrest report states. 

An intense, high-speed pursuit ensued for 18 minutes. Once again the GPS system located the car, but by the time the CHP got it back, its windshield was cracked, the light bar destroyed and the side mirror was torn off.

No one was hurt in that case either, and no recent cases of stolen CHP cruisers have been reported.

After each of the incidents, the officers involved were “provided additional training and mandatory policy review to prevent future occurrences such as this,” according to Rodriquez.

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