Why a driver of a stolen truck suddenly started going just 2 mph during high-speed chase
Editor’s note: A prior version of this story misidentified the person who is being sought by sheriff’s deputies.
Driving through orange groves was not enough to stop a man in a reportedly stolen truck during a pursuit Friday in Fresno County.
What did the trick, however, was the truck’s own navigation system.
Sheriff’s deputies used an OnStar system to slow down a pickup truck that was stolen Friday and driven through several orchards and Fresno County roads.
Spike strips were laid out to try to stop the driver, George Boston, but that also was not successful. Deputies on the ground and on a sheriff’s helicopter spotted the white pickup and began following it after reports that it was stolen.
But Boston, 43, continued the chase to an orange grove near Sanger. It wasn’t until deputies learned the truck was equipped with OnStar that a request was made to have the system attempt to slow down the truck — and it worked.
“He was literally doing 1 to 2 miles an hour driving through an orchard,” Fresno County Sheriff’s spokesman Tony Botti told reporters after the chase. He said the OnStar system managed to remotely slow the truck “down to less than 5 miles an hour.”
OnStar is a vehicle communications system that can control a car remotely among its many features.
The truck eventually became stuck between orange groves.
Once Boston came to a stop, deputies fired bean bags at the back window after the man refused to come out. A K-9 was deployed and also bit him in another attempt to get the man to exit the truck.
Botti said Boston, who is from Orange Cove, was taken to the hospital to be treated for his injuries, and would then be booked into Fresno County Jail.
This story was originally published June 21, 2019 at 7:34 PM.
