Wild but brief police chase goes the wrong way down McKinley in front of Whole Foods

Police Chief chased a Safeway shoplifter down McKinley at rush hour, lamppost pays the price

Left, Police Chief Sean McDonagh, Dispatcher Andre Mills, and Police Lieutenant Andrew Bauer at the corner of Petaluma Avenue and McKinley. Right, bike and fallen lamppost. (Photos taken by a witness at the scene)

Police Chief Sean McDonagh was grabbing a cup of coffee at the Starbucks in Safeway just after 5 pm on Tuesday, when, according to Police Lieutenant Andrew Bauer, “An employee ran up to him and told him, ‘Hey, that guy that is walking out behind you just stole a basketful of food,’ and so the chief went out, tried to make contact, and the guy took off on his bike.”

A brief chase followed, with the Chief of Police driving the wrong way up McKinley in front of Whole Foods at rush hour before knocking over a lamppost and giving chase on foot.

A witness, who asked not to be named, was sitting with a friend at Whole Foods when the whole thing went down. She saw two unmarked police cars pull into the plaza parking lot across the street. “And then, out of the blue, going up past Whole Foods, driving in the opposite direction, like making traffic veer to the left and veer to the right, is the police chief in a black SUV.”

That’s where things get murky.

This witness said she thought that Police Chief McDonagh’s car hit the back of the suspect’s bike—though a friend who was with her thought he missed the bike. Either way, the bike’s back wheel popped off, and the person on the bike (who the first witness mistook for a child) hopped off and took off running, as the chief’s car hit the pole and then the fence.

“It was a crazy scene,” she said.

“I called the non-emergency police line, and I’m like, ‘You guys need to come down here. Like, there’s like three unmarked cars, and like, they’re all swinging around the square, all driving fast, and one car just smashed into the lamppost and knocked it down, and you need to come out here because I think they just hit a kid.’”

It was not a kid——and, according to Lieutenant Bauer, “The suspect was not hit by the chief’s car or anybody else’s. It was the pole that was hit. The suspect ditched the bike at about that same time and ran away on foot.”

Another witness, Leah Wilmer, was walking up Brown Street — that little potholed street behind the empty lot that was supposed to be the Hotel Sebastopol.

“I started hearing police sirens and loud noises from the corner that Whole Foods is on, and then I hear shouts, and then I realized that there is a shorter Hispanic gentleman running down the road toward the Barlow.”

“So he is running down McKinley on the side of the empty lot, and he is first pursued by one police officer who honestly is also running extremely fast — I mean, kudos to him — and then another police officer parks their car — I don't know if he like hits the fence or what, but he like parks the car really suddenly, gets out, starts running after him as well.”

“They were obviously in pursuit of this guy, and they were telling him to stop. He obviously wasn’t stopping,” she said. “He was obviously trying to evade on foot.”

Wilmer said the suspect ran toward the Rialto but was cut off by another police officer coming up through the Rialto parking lot. “Then someone, like a police officer, got out, and then they were like, ‘Get down on the ground,’ and the guy got on the ground.”

And that was the end of that adventure.

Police arrested 48-year-old Juan Jose Gutierrez Lopez on a charge of shoplifting under $950 and resisting arrest, both of which are misdemeanors. Lieutenant Bauer reported the suspect has an extensive criminal record.

“The California Highway Patrol will be investigating the accident,” Gourley said. “The Chief was thankfully not hurt, and damage to the car was minor (headlight broken, scratches on the front bumper cover, and damage to the corner of the roof where the pole fell on the car). The pole itself will need to be replaced, per Public Works.”

---