A driver who struck two other motorists and rammed a police car was arrested in Albany on Thursday evening after a chase through Berkeley, authorities report.
Edwin Hood, 36, of San Francisco is being held at Berkeley Jail on $160,000 bail, according to Alameda County sheriff’s office records online. Hood was arrested on suspicion of assault on an officer, felony evading, auto theft, and hit-and-run causing property damage.
The incident began Thursday at 7 p.m. when police spotted a stolen Lexus south of the UC Berkeley campus, said Berkeley Police Lt. Peter Hong in response to a Berkeleyside inquiry. Officers tried to stop the driver in downtown Berkeley, at Bancroft Way and Shattuck Avenue, but he fled into oncoming traffic, according to police.
“The Lexus hit two motorists and at one point rammed the door of a police car an officer was getting out of,” Hong said. “Fortunately, the officer was able to avoid injury by quickly getting back in the police car just before the door was forcibly shut by the ramming.”
The driver fled from downtown into South Berkeley, Hong said, and police called off the chase because the man in the Lexus “was driving so recklessly.”
Police lost sight of the stolen Lexus as the driver got onto eastbound Interstate 80, Hong said.
A short time later, Albany police officers found the Lexus abandoned near the Target store in that city, on Eastshore Highway south of Buchanan Street. They believed the driver might have gone into the store, Hong said.
Officers from Berkeley and Albany searched Target and found Hood, whom they had identified as the driver of the stolen Lexus. He was arrested just before 8 p.m., according to jail records online.
Hood, who works at Admiral Security, is slated to appear in an Oakland courtroom for arraignment Monday morning at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse, according to records online.
According to Alameda County court records online, Hood was convicted in 2004 for an armed robbery case from the year prior. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
