I admit that I watched from 10-11:30 pm, but once it turned into a standoff at Universal Studios I finally gave up. Rumors were circulating that the driver was a celebrity - possibly a rapper (don't forget the Grammy Awards were in L.A. on Sunday night and one of the stars was arrested for battery) and a real circus atmosphere developed around this whole thing.
It wasn't a celebrity after all, and it didn't end well:
A businessman of Pakistani origin who led police on a more than three-hour chase in a luxury Bentley sedan shot himself to death early today after more than a dozen police cruisers surrounded his halted vehicle near Universal City, a source close to the Los Angeles Police Department said.Seriously, though, local news directors have got to decide whether they are going to follow these idiotic chases for hours or actually report the news stories they've been working on all day. One station, which does a local news broadcast from 8-11 pm, lost their entire broadcast to this thing. The other stations which have either 10pm or 11pm broadcasts gave up all of their time (and their advertising revenue) to broadcast endless helicopter shots of the slow moving car.
He was taken to a local hospital, where he later died, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.
"It appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot," said the source, who described the suspect as distraught over the loss of his business.
The shooting occurred at 12:41 a.m., about an hour and a half after the suspect had stopped near the scene of an alleged assault with a deadly weapon against his girlfriend in the 4000 block of Lankershim Boulevard.
Police suspected the man was armed and had been "very, very careful" not to confront him during the pursuit that traversed Los Angeles County along the Hollywood Freeway and Interstates 5, 10 and 405, said Officer Karen Smith of the media relations office.
The Illinois-registered white sedan, worth more than $100,000, traversed the city's busiest freeways at or below the speed limit from the time the driver left North Hollywood at 7:55 p.m. until the vehicle stopped at 11:15 p.m. and the long standoff ensued.
The stations are panicked that they won't carry the grinding crash or meek surrender live and somehow that will hurt their ratings. We used to have something called "videotape" that stations could use to show news events after they happen. Whatever became of that ancient technology?
These things are happening so frequently in L.A. these days that it's becoming a rarity to see an entire newscast. The chase yesterday was the second one that evening. There was another chase during the 6pm hour. Last week we had chases three nights in a row.
The only good thing that came out of this was I didn't have to hear any fawning reports about Obama's press conference or speech in Indiana.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment