Woman taken into custody after police pursuit ends in violent wrong-way crash

LOS ANGELES (KCAL/KCBS) - A woman in California was taken into police custody Friday after a car chase ended in a violent wrong-way crash.

The woman’s family said she struggles with mental illness and recently reported her missing, according to police.

Cellphone video shows the woman outside the white Chevy van with Missouri plates causing a disturbance.

Relatives identified her as 41-year-old Lisa Heflin, the woman seen in a missing persons flyer.

Los Angeles police were called to the corner of 3rd Avenue and Rose Avenue just before 4:30 a.m. Friday morning when neighbors said Heflin backed her van into a police car.

“I heard a bang. It sounded like two vehicles hitting each other,” one witness described.

Wayne Dean lives near the location where Heflin’s van was parked.

“She stepped on the gas hard so it spun the tires,” Dean said. “I ran to get on the sidewalk, but she went backwards and pretty much backed into the LAPD’s cruiser.”

That led to a dangerous police pursuit, which made its way onto the 405 Freeway.

The van hit one car, then police attempted a PIT maneuver, which caused the Chevy to spin around and go in the wrong direction.

Moments later, as the van went against traffic it crashed into a car before slamming into a truck.

David Hill was also involved in the pile-up crash.

“She was pinned inside the van. I was terrified, so I immediately just jumped out of my car and came over to the shoulder because I didn’t know if that person was armed with a gun, knife, what they wanted to do,” Hill remembered. “It was pretty terrifying.”

Images of Heflin’s arrest made their way to Missouri where her ex-husband and another relative said she’s had a history of mental problems.

A family member filed a missing persons report Thursday after they lost contact with her earlier in the week.

Neighbors in the area said the city has cleaned up encampments in the area over the past year, but new faces have since popped up living in cars and vans.

“If they cleaned it up, we wouldn’t have all these crimes and all these issues here. People are always calling the police all the time,” one area resident said.