Person in stolen forklift leads Sacramento police on chase: "How fast can he be going?"
SACRAMENTO – A slow-speed chase through one east Sacramento community struck fear and then amusement into residents of the area. A person driving a stolen forklift led officers on a chase in the city's River Park neighborhood late Sunday night into Monday morning.
Sacramento police said officers initially spotted the suspect just before midnight driving down Fair Oaks Boulevard from the Arden Arcade area over the river and tried to pull the forklift over. The driver wouldn't yield, though, sparking a chase.
The forklift eventually drove onto a bike trail. He then got stuck after crashing into a fence near Glenn Hall Park along Sandburg Drive.
"They're talking about this forklift and I'm thinking, OK, there's a forklift parked on a street somewhere that they're worried about running into," James Nunnely said. "And then I realized, 'No, they're chasing a forklift.' "
It was the slowest chase Nunnely had ever heard of.
"I was already awake, but it sounded like every officer in Sacramento was in the neighborhood," he told CBS13.
While caring for his grandmother, Nunnely heard sirens all over the neighborhood.
"It was surrounding. It was like all you could hear was sirens," he said. "It was everywhere."
Officers soon arrested the driver, 47-year-old Sacramento resident Wayne Mathern, on the bike trail near the Howe river access point.
"It's like, how fast can he be going that they can't run out and jump in and get this guy out of the forklift?" Nunnely said. "But then they're talking about he's ramming a fence at the park and he's making his way up the levee and it's more and more drama."
Mathern is now facing charges of evading, resisting arrest, and vandalism.