LAS VEGAS (AP) - An armed man arrested in California after allegedly ramming a deputy’s vehicle with a stolen car is also suspected in a carjacking, police chase and road-rage shooting that led to the lockdown of a university campus in Las Vegas, authorities said Friday.
Kevin Michael Kealoha, 34, was on the run from Nevada authorities late Thursday when he stole a Honda Civic at gunpoint at a California gas station and led deputies on a winding high-speed pursuit, said Cindy Bachman, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department in San Bernardino County. The Civic collided with a fence, and then Kealoha intentionally crashed it into a deputy’s car before being arrested, Bachman said.
Earlier Kealoha allegedly carjacked a Chevrolet Cruze before dawn Thursday in the Las Vegas area, investigators there said.
When the Nevada Highway Patrol attempted to pull over the Cruze for unrelated reasons, the car sped off and eluded troopers chasing it on Highway 95.
Then around 10:30 a.m., police were called to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for a reported shooting. Police said a woman with her 11-year-old daughter drove her pickup onto the campus to get away from the Cruze after it started tailing her. The driver of the Cruze fired seven to nine rounds at the pickup before speeding off, authorities said.
The gunfire triggered a campus-wide lockdown, but no one was injured in what the woman described as a possible road rage incident.
The Cruze was later found abandoned in suburban Henderson, Nevada.
Authorities were able to tie the shooting to both the earlier carjacking and the highway chase - and they named Kealoha as the main suspect. Police said they believe he had been stealing cars in Las Vegas since Tuesday.
Officials in both states said they expect charges against him to include attempted murder, robbery, grand larceny, carjacking and attempted kidnapping, among other offenses.
He was expected to be arraigned in California on Monday, Bachman said. Eventually he’s likely to be extradited to Nevada, she said.
Kealoha was also wanted on unspecified warrants in Hawaii, Bachman said.
She didn’t know if he has an attorney.
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