A Los Angeles husband and father’s roadside skirmish with a vagrant is credited with stopping a suspect who was allegedly in the process of setting several brush fires on the west side.
Richard Lazenby, an LA attorney whose neighborhood was impacted by last year’s Bel Air Crest fire, told 790 KABC he was driving with his family on Easter Sunday, along Sepulveda Boulevard near the Getty Center, when they saw the homeless man standing in the road.
“There’s a guy acting crazed in the middle of the street. There’s people standing around him, photos, taking videos and yelling at him. So, we kind of slow down to see what’s going on. As we pass by him, he bends down at the foot of the hill, as if he’s going to light another fire. So, we passed slowly,” said Lazenby.
“I looked in my rear view mirror and, sure enough, smoke starts to flare up from where he is bent down. So, at that point I just kind of went into auto-pilot. I did a 180, and he’s backing up as people were yelling at him– and I drive up to him– to the point where he backs into my car. He spins around, I yell at him. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m going to destroy everything!’ And so, at that point my intent was just to take him down,” Lazenby said. “And so I jumped out of the car. We tussled in the street for a little bit… tumbled over into the weeds. I was able to get on top of him, pinned him down… held his arms down and the police showed up about 15 minutes later.”
Lazenby, who was wearing a suit and dress shoes at the time, says it was fortunate that the suspect didn’t have a knife or gun during the scuffle. So, he and his family were able to enjoy the rest of their Easter Sunday. Lazenby was a guest on The Morning Drive.
By Christina Kelley, KABC News.