SAN DIEGO - A man who allegedly slashed a fellow trolley rider with a box cutter Monday for no apparent reason and then seized a car outside a nearby restaurant was arrested several hours later while trying to hide in a Serra Mesa canyon.
The assault occurred about 12:30 p.m., as the assailant and victim were approaching a transit depot on Taylor Street, according to San Diego police. When the trolley pulled to a stop at the station, the attacker jumped off and ran away, SDPD Detective Gary Hassen said.
"This was a completely unprovoked attack," said San Diego Police Lt. Darryl Hoover. "The trolley came from downtown which we believe the suspect and the victim had entered. When the trolley stopped, the assault took place. There’s no relationship between the suspect and the victim."
Medics took the victim to a hospital for treatment of a wound of undetermined severity.
The assailant, meanwhile, confronted a motorist near Perry's Cafe on Pacific Highway, punched him in the chest, forced him out of his white 1992 Buick sedan and drove off to the north, the detective said.
Witnesses described him as a roughly 6-foot-1, 230-pound man in his 40s, wearing black pants and a black jacket.
Shortly before 3 p.m., a television news cameraman driving through Clairemont Mesa spotted the stolen Buick parked and abandoned alongside the southbound lanes of Interstate 805, near Mesa College Drive, Hassen said.
Officers with a service dog searched a brushy open area into which the carjacker apparently had fled after pulling over on the freeway, according to Hassen. About 4 p.m., police took the suspect into custody off the 7800 block of Mission Center Road.
His name was not immediately available.
