John Wayne Ferguson
Houston Chronicle
(TNS)
Feb. 6—A man who was suffering from a possible mental health crisis Monday is accused of stealing an ambulance that was parked inside a fire station and driving it around the city for more than an hour before being apprehended by police.
Police didn't immediately name the man, who was taken into custody after the ambulance crashed into a car at Rice and Greenbriar. Officials said they expected auto theft and evading arrest charges to be filed against him.
After the crash, police said the man was a suspect in another auto theft. He is believed to have stolen a car from a Kroger gas station at 1035 Shepherd at 12:36 p.m., Houston police Cmdr. Caroleta Johnson said.
The man allegedly approached a woman at the gas station and told her that the gas cap on her vehicle was loose, police said.
When the woman got out of her car, the man got inside the running vehicle and drove off, Johnson said
For reasons that weren't immediately clear, the man drove the car to Houston Fire Station No. 17, at 2805 Navigation. After approaching a firefighter who was outside the building, the man went inside the station's vehicle bay, boarded a reserve ambulance and drove it away, police said.
Fire officials said it is normal for vehicles parked inside the station to have keys kept inside the cab. It was unclear if the vehicle was running at the time the man entered.
The stolen ambulance was reported around 1:15 p.m. A supervisor from the station tried to follow the vehicle but lost it in traffic, officials said.
The ambulance was missing for more than an hour, until it was spotted near the West Loop at Richmond by a Houston Police Department helicopter. Rodney West, executive assistant chief of the Houston Fire Department, said a GPS tracker on board the ambulance wasn't working properly after it was stolen.
"We had some challenges with the automatic vehicle location," West said. "We weren't able to consistently pinpoint where it would be."
West said reserve vehicles are generally older vehicles, but it's unclear if age had anything to do with the tracker not working.
Police received at least one report of the ambulance driving erratically and possibly going down a protected bike trail near U.S. 50 and Interstate 10. The man could be heard talking on an emergency radio about people who were trying to hurt him, Johnson said.
About 3 p.m., police used spike strips to try to stop the ambulance in the 5300 block of Greenbriar. The ambulance continued to travel south on Greenbriar until it hit the back of a silver SUV and stopped just before the intersection with Rice Boulevard.
A television news helicopter spotted the man being pulled out of the ambulance by multiple police officers and being handcuffed while he was on the ground.
Johnson said the man matched a form of identification that was left in the first stolen vehicle. Officials hadn't determined why he took the ambulance. West said nothing inside the vehicle was missing or damaged.
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