People v. Welcome CA3

I. BACKGROUND

In September 2021, defendant’s ex-wife called Paradise police to report that defendant had assaulted her and was trying to ram her in an orange dump truck after she fled in her car.1 Responding officers saw an orange dump truck chasing another car and attempted to stop it. Defendant was driving the dump truck at an excessive rate of speed, crossed lanes of traffic unsafely, and drove into two ditches and hit a power pole. Defendant refused to stop, and officers eventually terminated the chase for safety reasons. His ex-wife later told the officers that before the chase, defendant had hit her during an argument, causing bruising and swelling on her face and cutting her eye and mouth; he also threatened to kill her. Defendant was subsequently apprehended. In March 2022, defendant was charged in Butte County case No. 21CF04634 with assault with a deadly weapon, a vehicle (Pen. Code, § 245, subd. (a)(1)—count 1),2 criminal threats (§ 422, subd. (a)—count 2), corporal injury of a spouse or cohabitant (§ 273.5, subd. (a)—count 3), false imprisonment by violence (§ 236—count 4), and two counts of fleeing a pursuing peace officer’s motor vehicle while driving recklessly…