A 28-year-old Cypress man driving his 2003 Honda Civic while impaired and carrying cocaine on him led a high speed police chase early Thursday that ended after the car crashed into a cement bench at the Manhattan Beach Pier, according to authorities.
Devin Ashley Chavez was being held in lieu of $75,000 bail on suspicion of evading police, driving under the influence and possession of cocaine, according to the Manhattan Beach Police Department.
He's due in court in Torrance on Monday.
The fun began after a patrol car noticed the Civic driving slowly with its lights off–around 1 a.m.
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The police officer attempted to pull the Civic over, but it instead sped off westbound on Manhattan Beach Boulevard, reaching such high speeds that the cop decided to back off due to safety concerns, according to the department.
But the Civic kept right on going, crashing into a Manhattan Beach Pier barrier, careening about 100 feet along a lifeguard station and coming to stop upon smashing into a concrete bench, police said. The wild ride earned Chavez a trip to the hospital to get patched up before he was booked into jail.
Cop reporter extraordinaire Larry Altman got the details on Chavez's Orange County criminal past for the Daily Breeze.
Orange County Superior Court records show Chavez has had problems with the law before. In September 2005, he was charged with spousal abuse, but ultimately was convicted of battery against a cohabitant. He was sentenced to two years probation, but six months later was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
In 2006, he was ordered to attend an alcohol program at Orange Coast College, received three days in jail and lost his driver's license for a year, apparently resulting from a driving-under-the-influence case.
In 2009, he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to attend counseling programs.
Department of Motor Vehicles records show his license has been suspended three times since 2009, including for drunken driving.
Chavez was not alone in being patched up; so were the structures that were damaged, which prompted a brief closure of the pier, Altman reports.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.