2 Arrested After South Bay Police Chases

Two high-speed police pursuits through the South Bay ended in arrests Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, with the second chase finishing less than a block from where the first had begun.

At about 9:35 p.m., a Westminster man sat in his new Camaro Z28 on Del Amo Boulevard in Torrance, waiting to make a left turn onto Hawthorne Boulevard.

A man armed with a handgun approached Mark McLellan, 24, knocked on the driver’s-side window of the car and ordered McLellan to get out, Torrance Police Sgt. Ron Traber said. As McLellan began to open the door, the man reportedly fired a single shot into the window, shattering it.

McLellan, who was not injured, ran to a nearby business and called police as the gunman got into the car and sped east on Del Amo Boulevard, reports said.

Police officers began chasing the car near Sepulveda Boulevard and Maple Avenue. During the pursuit, the driver threw away a gun, which police said they found later.

The car ran several red lights, police said, and reached speeds of 85 miles an hour before slamming into another car on Western Avenue at 235th Street.

Two passengers in that car--Leigh Tucker, 18, and Margaret Tucker, 40, both of North Carolina--were treated and released at Bay Harbor Hospital.

The suspect, 21-year-old Delbert Leon Standifer Jr. of Carson, ran away from the crash scene toward some nearby shops. After a 20-minute search involving several police units and a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter, police arrested him when a witness to the accident spotted him trying to hide in the crowd that had gathered around the scene.

Standifer is being held without bail in the Torrance city jail on suspicion of robbery, grand theft, assault with a firearm, felony pursuit causing injuries and hit and run, police said.

At about 3 a.m., a sheriff’s deputy spotted a man arguing with a clerk inside a 7-Eleven store in Lawndale. As the deputy walked toward the store, the man ran outside, dropped some cigarettes he had stolen, and jumped into a 1973 Plymouth he had left in the middle of the parking lot, reports said.

The deputy chased the man south on Prairie Avenue at speeds that also reached 85 m.p.h., Sheriff’s Sgt. Don Neilsensaid. As the suspect headed west on Del Amo Boulevard, his car suddenly spun out near Perkins Avenue, less than a block from where the evening’s first pursuit had begun.

A police dog found the suspect, 30-year-old Aaron Ballin, hiding in the back yard of a house in the 20300 block of Roslin Avenue, Neilsen said. Ballin was being held at the county jail Wednesday in lieu of $10,000 bail.