A Stolen Party Bus Led Police On A High-Speed Chase
I have so many questions, Mainly, why would anyone steal a party bus?
If you're on the run from authorities, I can see why you'd need something — anything — to get away in. But I feel like you'd want something that didn't stand out, or something with a lot of speed. But a party bus? You might as well wear a sign that says "please lock me up." That's what's going to happen to one woman, as local Southern California news outlets report that she stole a party bus before leading police on a chase across Southern California.
It all started when the driver of the bus, an employee of limo operator Top Dog Limo Bus, arrived in the San Diego neighborhood of Bay Ho around 10:15 am local time. He was there picking up a client. For reasons that are still unknown (and a violation of the California idle regulations), the driver had the brilliant idea to hop out of the running bus. That's when the woman saw her chance, jumped in the bus, and took off.
Not long after the bus was reported stolen, police began a local search, but the woman was already miles away, blasting down the 405 freeway in the Ford F-Series based bus. The owner of the limo service says that they began to receive calls about the woman's erratic driving on the freeway. From KTLA:
We get a call from a driver off the 405 complaining to us that the person driving it was driving crazy on the freeway and doing 90 mph and I explained to him that was a stolen bus and he stayed on the phone until we called dispatch and got somebody out there.
Over an hour after the woman snatched the bus, CHP was finally tipped off and spotted it. She had made it over 110 miles from San Diego and was now in Torrance. The chase officially began at 11:45 am.
CHP and local news choppers followed the chase as the bus entered the Antelope Valley still doing 80 mph. At one point, the bus slammed into the back of a car on the freeway. The force of the hit was so strong that it sent the bus onto the other side of the freeway into oncoming traffic. Luckily traffic was able to avoid hitting the bus.
A few minutes after the hit, the bus stopped, and the driver surrendered. She was charged with auto theft and evasion of arrest. The person in the vehicle that was hit by the bus was treated for their injuries.