The chase ended in a bloodied man being handcuffed and handcuffed, thanks to the actions of bystanders and police who intervened.
It was the first of two dramas on the North Shore this morning. In the other, reports from a gunman closed schools.
It is clear that the two events have nothing to do with each other.
Brandon Boyle said he was at Church St around 9:45 am when a man exited Holy Trinity Church, slammed the doors and got into a blue Toyota Corolla parked on nearby grass and drove off – crashing a few hundred yards away.
“Then he hijacked an old lady’s Nissan Leaf and threw her out of the car,” Boyle said.
The woman looked 60-70, he said. “He just got her out of the car. She wasn’t lying on the floor, she was tripping.’
The man drove off. Boyle and another bystander chased the car on foot and alerted oncoming police that the man had switched cars.
“We just kept chasing until he hit about six cars on the left side of the main road. When he hit that, he swerved straight into a fence.”
Boyle said he tried to open the front door, but a police officer came from the left and jumped into the passenger seat.
The driver zoomed out again, with the officer still in the car, but collided with another car – which Boyle believed was due to the police officer’s jerking at the wheel.
The man jumped out and ran up Domain St, where he kicked open a door and ran into a house, Boyle said.
Boyle, the other bystander, and police officers chased him around the back of the house, but he crossed the street to another house, where they cornered him on a deck.
Three officers treated the man with a taser, Boyle said.
“He went down pretty easily, right away. An officer tasered him and two others came after him and tasered him too.”
The man — who was wearing only gray sweatpants — appeared to be bleeding from his chin and had blood on his hands, Boyle said.
Despite the drama, Boyle was unfazed. “I’m from South Africa, so we deal with things like this on a daily basis – it’s nothing new to me,” he said.
Another Devonport resident said she arrived at Domain St around 9:45 am to see a line of police cars. Then she heard the crash of a car and loud popping of tires.
The resident said she thought police were ready to lay down a spiked mat to stop cars.
“A man gets out of the car” [that’s crashed] and runs to a house and knocks out their gate and then runs into the backyard of the property. The man then runs across the street to another house,” she said.
“The man was shirtless and there was a blood smear on him, probably because he was involved in the accident.”
The resident said the man was then apprehended on the street by armed officers.
“He looked in his late twenties and was quite sloppy.”
The resident said she rushed to check on her family in nearby Cambridge Tce because one of the houses the shirtless man ran into shared a fence with her own.
Police said a person had been taken into custody this morning following “a stolen vehicle incident in Devonport”, but said there were no reports of injuries.