Berkeley police have two armed robbery suspects in custody tonight after they chased them by car through several different parts of Berkeley.
The high-speed chase ended in Emeryville, near Powell Street Plaza, where the two suspects were eventually apprehended, according to Officer Jennifer Coats, spokeswoman for the Berkeley Police Department.
Coats said the armed robbery happened at Arch and Virginia streets one block north of the UC Berkeley campus at 8:42 p.m. Coats said it was most likely a pedestrian robbery, although she wanted to confirm that.
A police officer saw two suspects fleeing in a vehicle and, when the officer tried to pull the car over, the suspects fled and evaded the police, according to Coats.
After several police cars had pursued the suspects for awhile, the suspect’s vehicle became disabled near the I-80 off-ramp near Powell Street, Coats said.
One suspect was caught immediately. The other fled on foot, but was apprehended and is now also in custody.
From shortly before 9 p.m., several Berkeleyside readers began alerting Berkeleyside of what they were seeing and hearing via Twitter.
At 8:56 p.m. Adam Carson reported seeing “high speed police chase down my street in North Berkeley.”
At 9 p.m. Mike Ranney posted: “Went down Virginia past Grant about 5 minutes ago.”
At 9:02 p.m. Greg Merritt posted: “DOZENS of police cars screaming northbound MLK at Alcatraz!!!”
And at 9:07 p.m. Nathan Slavik posted: “Huge police chase down our street (California), seems like they are headed into Emeryville.”
One reader emailed us shortly after 9 p.m. to report what he had seen. He wrote: “High speed chase southbound on California st. @ 62nd. Around 8:50pm. 6-8 police cars going 50 mph. I didn’t see who they were chasing. There were two ‘civilian’ cars quickly chasing after the cops. Very strange. First high speed chase on our block in the ten year I’ve lived here. They went out of sight just south of Stanford/market, then we could see 10+ police cars speeding west on Stanford. All was quiet a few minutes later.”
Coats said a police investigation is now underway.
This story was updated as we gathered more information.
Want to get breaking news quickly? Follow Berkeleyside on Twitter and on Facebook.
