By Rosalio Ahumada
The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Authorities arrested two 16-year-old boys who led detectives on a high-speed pursuit that ended Tuesday afternoon with a crash and a car fire on a busy stretch of Highway 50 in Sacramento, sheriff’s officials said.
Investigators recovered three guns at the scene of the crash after the two teens displayed “complete reckless behavior,” streaming themselves live on Instagram during the chase, said Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
Gandhi said gang enforcement detectives with the Sheriff’s Office were conducting “proactive patrol” about 3:30 p.m. near Broadway and 37th Street in Sacramento’s North Oak Park neighborhood when they tried to pull over a vehicle with an equipment violation, also known as a non-moving vehicle code violation.
The car, a silver sedan that was not reported stolen, failed to stop and led the detectives on a high-speed pursuit that lasted about 10 minutes, Gandhi said.
The fleeing car struck two other vehicles along the way, Gandhi said, before the pursuit ended on the W-X portion of Highway 50 , near Fifth and X streets just east of Interstate 5. He said the silver car was left behind engulfed in flames on the freeway as the two teens ran away, jumping off a freeway embankment about 15 to 20 feet before they were captured shortly after.
The car caught fire after the crash on the freeway, but it wasn’t clear what exactly sparked the fire in the car, Gandhi said.
The sheriff’s spokesman said both teens are “validated gang members,” one of whom was arrested for leading authorities in a chase a few months ago. The Sheriff’s Office did not release the arrested teens’ names because they are minors.
Gandhi said the teens would be medically examined to make sure they were not injured before they’re booked at the Sacramento County Juvenile Hall on charges of illegal firearm possession and felony evading of police.
“They want to keep talking about these non-moving violations and why we do it,” Gandhi told reporters Tuesday. “This is why we stop these folks. These are dangerous folks, and who knows what they were going to do right now.”
He said “amazingly” there were no reported injuries, including the teens in the fleeing car.
“They were live on Instagram while they were in this pursuit,” Gandhi said. “This is how not serious they took this. This was just a real life video game to them.”
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