A 23-year-old man allegedly led police on a high-speed pursuit through Hazel Dell and a manhunt in west Vancouver’s Lincoln neighborhood Thursday evening, before he was caught by officers and a police dog.
The man, identified as Scott D. Lavelle, was the same man who had eluded authorities earlier in the day in Felida, authorities said.
In the morning, deputies with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office tried to stop a vehicle as part of a drug investigation, but the vehicle took off and crashed just before noon, the sheriff’s office said.
Nobody was injured and the driver of the vehicle was taken into custody. But a passenger — believed to be Lavelle — ran away. Police searched for him near the Salmon Creek Trail and came up empty.
A few hours later, around 6:30 p.m., police spotted the suspect speeding in a white Mercury Cougar on Northwest 119th Street. Deputies tried to pull over the vehicle, which continued southbound, reportedly hitting speeds of 80 mph.
Authorities said the man had allegedly carjacked the car.
June O’Brien was heading home from shopping when the car suddenly barreled through traffic on Highway 99. The car clipped a police SUV in front of her and then swerved and hit another vehicle — a scene that made her “scared to death.”
“He just kept going. It was the craziest thing,” O’Brien said. “We were just kind of stuck there for a while.”
The car briefly got on Interstate 5 and then exited at West 39th Street, where it crashed near Main Street. The suspect bolted out of the car, cocked a handgun and pointed it at a pursuing officer, according to emergency radio traffic.
Officials summoned a SWAT team to the area and set up a search perimeter while telling residents to stay inside their homes. Vancouver police and Washington State Patrol troopers assisted. Emergency dispatchers used a phone system to alert nearby residents to the police activity.
Around 8:14 p.m. one of the K-9 officers tracking the suspect found and bit Lavelle, who was taken into custody and sent to a local hospital for treatment of the dog bite. He was booked into the Clark County Jail on suspicion of first-degree assault, attempt to elude, first-degree robbery, kidnapping and hit-and-run of an attended vehicle.
The Major Crimes Unit is investigating what happened.
Reporter Emily Gillespie contributed to this story.
