Chase, 6-Hour Standoff Follow Traffic Accident

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  An armed man who fled the scene of an accident barricaded himself in his mother’s home for nearly six hours Saturday, causing a block-wide evacuation before he finally gave himself up to a SWAT team, authorities said.

Abel Aranda, 41, of Garden Grove was arrested peacefully at 7 p.m. as he walked out the front door of the home on Don Drive, ending a tense standoff in the normally quiet residential neighborhood, Huntington Beach Police Officer Mike Kelly said.

No one was injured in the incident, but several neighbors saw the tail end of a high-speed chase when Aranda lost control of his truck and stopped several houses from his mother’s.

A police officer and Aranda squared off at gunpoint, and the officer fired several rounds. The rear window of Aranda’s truck was blown out and he fled on foot, jumping over fences into backyards.

One neighbor said she saw Aranda return the fire, though police could only confirm that he had “possibly” discharged his weapon.

“I saw the truck come around and stop and [Aranda] started shooting,” said neighbor Jennifer Elwood, 36. “He ran from his truck. The next thing I saw was neighbors coming out of their houses, panicked.”

Elwood said it was the first time she had witnessed any problems with Aranda, a landscape contractor, or others at his mother’s home. “They have all been real friendly,” she said.

The incident began about 12:50 p.m. when another driver apparently pulled in front of Aranda at the intersection of Heil Avenue and Bolsa Chica Street and collided with his pickup truck, Kelly said. When Aranda failed to stop, the driver called police.

Several blocks away at the intersection of Golden West Street and Heil, a Huntington Beach police sergeant spotted Aranda in his pickup truck and pulled him over. But when the officer got out of his police car, Aranda sped away east on Heil and a chase ensued, with speeds reaching 100 mph, Kelly said.

“They began to give him orders to stop,” Kelly said. “He failed to comply, raised a handgun and pointed it at the sergeant. The sergeant fired at the suspect.”

Aranda lost control of his vehicle several times during the chase, which continued southbound on Rhine Drive and then onto Don Drive, Kelly said.

A police helicopter spotted Aranda going into what turned out to be his mother’s residence. Three adults and two children, identified only as relatives and friends of Aranda’s, fled out the front door. But a 28-year-old handicapped man remained in the home an hour before he managed to crawl outside to the frontyard, Kelly said.

Amy Silverman, an onlooker who identified herself as Aranda’s girlfriend, said her boyfriend was “manic depressive” and hadn’t taken his medicine recently. She also said he was upset because they had argued.

At 4 p.m., the special weapons and tactics team arrived and evacuated much of the neighborhood. Aranda had additional weapons inside the residence, police said, but no more shots were fired.

The SWAT team simply waited Aranda out, eventually reaching him by telephone and persuading him to surrender.

Aranda was booked into Huntington Beach City Jail and charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, Kelly said. Bail was set at $50,000.