A California man was arrested after leaving a Monterey pier in an attempt to evade police during a high-speed chase by a drunk driver.
Martin Urroz, 21, of Fresno, was booked into the Monterey County Jail on multiple charges, including driving under the influence and evading a police officer.
Monterey Police Department officers were walking down Alvarado Street on Sunday when they saw a green 1997 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck roaring around a corner, heading the wrong way on a one-way street.
As the truck turned onto Municipal Wharf II, a bustling wharf lined with restaurants, another MPD officer turned on the dome lights of his police cruiser to initiate a traffic stop.
The driver, later identified as Urroz, turned to the right of the dock and stopped. As the officer approached the vehicle on foot, the truck resumed moving and headed toward the end of the dock “at a high rate of speed,” according to police.
A California man has been arrested after driving his pickup truck off a Monterey pier and crashing into the ocean in a desperate attempt to evade police.
Martin Urroz, 21, of Fresno, was charged with driving under the influence after driving the wrong way down a one-way street, turning onto the pier and plunging into the ocean.
According to police, the other three people in the car suffered minor injuries, while Urroz was taken to a local trauma center for treatment.
Officers saw the four occupants of the vehicle in the ocean and suspected they had jumped out to evade police before realizing the Chevrolet Silverado was underwater.
The officer called other officers for help and got back into his patrol car. He drove to the end of the dock, where he suspected the truck was hiding behind a building.
Other agents arrived and parked their patrol cars to block the truck’s exit. As they began to walk towards the end of the pier, they heard calls for help from the ocean.
Assuming the four people had jumped into the water to evade capture, police threw flotation devices into the water and ordered them to hold on while they called firefighters.
But when the truck was nowhere to be found, police realized that the truck had left the dock and disappeared under the water.
The four people were rescued from the water in a joint effort between MPD, the Monterey Fire Department and the United States Coast Guard.
Urroz was taken to the Natividad Trauma Center for treatment, while the three passengers only suffered minor injuries, police said.
The scene was eerily reminiscent of an incident two months ago, when a car plunged off a 650-foot-long pier in Virginia Beach in the early hours of Jan. 27.
The scene mirrored an incident from earlier this year, when a 57-year-old man walked off the end of a Virginia Beach pier in a suspected suicide.
The driver roared down the 650-foot-long boardwalk and appeared to brake briefly before crashing into a wooden railing and tumbling into the ocean.
The vehicle left a scene of destruction in its wake and nearly collided with a pedestrian.
The medical examiner identified the driver as a Virginia Beach local, but declined to release his name.
The driver appeared to brake before crashing through a wooden railing at the end of the boardwalk, leaving a mess of shattered barriers in his wake.
The moment the car fell over the edge was captured by a witness filming from a nearby beach.
Footage taken from a different angle showed the vehicle nearly colliding with a passenger.
Police released underwater video of the wreckage amid their investigation, showing the car rolling on its roof at the bottom of the sea.
The vehicle was pulled from the water days later, but the medical examiner declined to release the name of the driver, saying only that he was a 57-year-old resident of the area.
Virginia Beach police indicated the man likely committed suicide.
“While we cannot assume we fully know what motivated this individual’s actions, they appear to have been deliberate,” the department wrote in a news release.