A California man was reportedly transported to the hospital earlier this week after he crashed his car on an Orange County property and threatened multiple people – including his roommates – with a pickaxe.
The man, who has not been identified, drove his Kia sedan into a landscaping wall on the 22000 block of Robin Street in Lake Forest, NBC Los Angeles reported.
Photos from the scene show the vehicle tilted onto two wheels on the crumbled remains of the brick structure.
The driver, who was visibly bloodied, was then captured on neighborhood cameras rushing toward the home where he rented a room. He forces the door open with his bodyweight before disappearing inside.
“He’s scared. He needs to enter the house as soon as possible, but he entered the wrong passcode,” Eric Li, who owns the home, told KTLA5 of the terrifying incident.
“He tried to use his body to break in.”
Li told the outlet that once his housemate got inside, he chased him into the yard, where he grabbed a large pickaxe.
“He chased me again. So, I crossed the street and asked the [neighbor] for help,” he recalled.
The man briefly chased a neighbor’s gardener before he returned to the house, where he was picked up on interior security footage trying to cut down another roommate’s bedroom door while the individual screamed for help on the other side.
“We were inside working and the gardener came up panicking and said somebody was chasing him with an ax. And we came out and we heard screaming and yelling at the house, sounded like somebody was being tortured,” neighbor Andy Lopez told ABC7 of the incident.
The third roommate, who requested not to be named, said he called 911 just as the raging man broke into the room.
“He kept hitting it harder and harder. I noticed that he was starting to get tired, so I tried to look for a good point in time where he might want to take a little break from swinging the ax for a second and when he did that, I swung the door open and kind of disarmed him,” he told KTLA.
By the time deputies arrived, he continued, he had disarmed his roommate and had the ax in hand – and police initially mistook him for the attacker.
“So, I dropped the ax and got down on the ground and complied with them and at that point, the attacker came up behind me while I was laying on the ground. And he picked up the ax again,” the horrified roommate explained.
Sgt. Mike Woodruff of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said officers subdued the ax-wielder with non-lethal force before taking him into custody.
“The deputies on scene, based on statement and his behavior, believe he is under the influence of some substance,” he said to KTLA.
“At this time, none of the individuals that were threatened were injured, and none of the homeowners or guests in the residence [where he crashed the car] were injured.”
Lopez told ABC7 that he heard first responders deploying weapons against the man.
“There was some terrible yelling and screaming. And the police went in, pulled out their weapons, and we heard like five gunshots. And, apparently, I guess they used non-lethal type ammunition,” he said.
“When they brought the suspect out he was pretty bloody.”