Man crashes car into home, then attacks roommates with pickaxe in Lake Forest
LAKE FOREST, Calif. (KABC) -- Residents of one Lake Forest neighborhood are glad that no one was seriously hurt after a temporary resident in one of the homes there crashed his car into a house, and then got out of the car and began chasing people with a pickaxe.
Video from a neighbor's street camera showed the suspect's car zoom down the road before it slammed into the home. The video also captured the sound of the collision.
The crazed man can then be seen running down the street toward where he was staying.
The man approached his home out of breath and with blood running down his head. He slammed open the front door using the full weight of his body.
At some point, the man grabbed a pickaxe from the backyard, and not only chased around one of his roommates, but also hacked at another roommate's door for several minutes with the man screaming for help from inside. The crazed man was able to break open the door, but somehow the roommate was able to subdue the axe wielding man.
The roommate who owns the home, Eric Li, said when the man began chasing him, he thought he was going to die.
"I said, 'Please, calm down. Tell me what happened,'" said Li. "You know, he never answered, just chased me. My parents, they grow a lot of vegetables in the backyard. They have a lot of tools."
Li said he thought he was a "dead man."
He was able to escape the man and run across the street, where he called 911.
Li said he saw the man chase one of his neighbors as well.
Another witness said they encountered another person who said they had been chased by the ax-wielding man.
"We were inside working and the gardener came up panicking and said somebody was chasing him with an ax. And we came out and we heard screaming and yelling at the house, sounded like somebody was being tortured," said Andy Lopez
Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies were able to use less than lethal force to take the erratic man down, and he was taken to a hospital to be treated for his injuries from the car crash. He has now been booked into jail.
"There was some terrible yelling and screaming. And the police went in they pulled out their weapons, and we heard like five gunshots. And, apparently, I guess they used non-lethal type ammunition," said Lopez. "When they brought the suspect out he was pretty bloody."
