People and Events

“We don’t run cars off the road or shoot at them in pursuit,” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Alan Bollinger after six young suspects in a stolen pickup truck were chased at high speed. “We just follow them until they stop.”

This time, Bollinger noted, it “took a bit longer to stop than most.”

Indeed. The action began in Central Los Angeles about midnight Thursday, when police ran a check on the license plate and concluded that the truck was stolen. It took off and, according to officers, hit more than 100 m.p.h. through Los Angeles County and into Kern County.

After 100 miles of that, California Highway Patrol officers simply rolled a spiked rubber strip across a road near Bakersfield, blowing out the truck’s tires. Four men and two juvenile boys scattered, but five were caught immediately.

The sixth suspect hid in a tree until the officers left the scene, police said, then hitched a ride with a trucker.

He bragged about the chase.

The trucker turned him in.

Another long-distance driver, however, expects no trouble with the cops.

Having already ridden more than 16,000 miles through 23 states with his dog on the back of his motorcycle, Bob Hallgren of Lomita says he and Mitzie are taking off again Thursday to do nearly 50,000 miles in all the states except Alaska and Hawaii.

“We’re going to set every record with a dog that’s ever been done,” vowed Hallgren, 53, a semi-retired industrial spray painter. “Last year I woke up in the middle of the night and knew I was to set a record that could never be broken.”

He was doing fine on his first attempt last year until his motorcycle hit a brick in the road near Boomtown, Nev. “Mitzie went straight up in the air, but neither of us got hurt.” The motorcycle wasn’t so lucky.

The experience apparently did not dim Mitzie’s love for tandem riding. Hallgren says the 5-year-old Belgian shepherd has been doing it since she was a few days old. “She has a little seat and sits up or stands and puts her head on my shoulder.”

The planned nine-month trip is being backed by a Lomita Yamaha dealer and others. In addition, Hallgren plans to sell T-shirts along the way. They are decorated with what he says is the 16,000-mile “world record” he and Mitzie already hold.

How does he know it’s a world record?

“No one else has ever attempted it.”

It took two sheriff’s deputies the better part of 45 minutes to talk a 21-year-old Commerce man down from a power pole where he perched angrily, apparently after an argument with his wife.

The deputies were called to the 1400 block of South Sydney Drive to handle what the Sheriff’s Information Bureau referred to as a “family disturbance.” When they got there, they said, they found Andrew Marchado sulking at the top of a Southern California Edison Co. pole. He refused to descend.

Finally, though, Deputy Bonnie Bray talked him into it. He was booked on suspicion of trespassing. “It’s against the law to climb a Southern California Edison pole unless you work for Southern California Edison,” information bureau officer Hal Grant explained.

It’s all very well for Charles Bronson to run around in movies, keeping the streets safe by blowing people away, but at least one man thinks the actor ought to keep his dog off the street, too.

Bronson and his wife, actress Jill Ireland, were sued in Los Angeles Superior Court by William Tallman, who claimed he was “viciously attacked and repeatedly bitten” by the dog, named Cassir, nearly a year ago.

“The Bronsons knew or should have known that Cassir was a dangerous animal with known vicious propensities because Cassir had attacked and bitten humans prior to the attack on the plaintiff,” said the suit, filed by attorney Arthur Barens.

The suit did not say where the alleged attack occurred. Nor would Barens discuss it, indicating that he hoped to settle the matter as quickly and as quietly as possible.

Bronson and Ireland were unavailable. A spokeswoman at the office of his agent said, “We don’t know anything about it.”