Driver Dies in Custody After Dose of Pepper Spray

A 35-year-old Huntington Beach man who fled from authorities on the San Diego Freeway died Tuesday after officers used pepper spray to control him, police said.

Raymond Martinez, 35, died just after midnight at San Clemente Hospital and Medical Center, Orange County coroner’s officials said.

The incident began at 11:16 p.m. Monday, when California Highway Patrol officers responded to a report of a vehicle driving the wrong way in the southbound lanes of the freeway about three-fourths of a mile south of Basilone Road in San Diego County.

The officers found a vehicle stalled in the median and saw a man, later identified by the coroner as Martinez, yelling as he walked along the shoulder.

Authorities said the man ran east across the southbound lanes, jumped over the divider, then kept running across the northbound lanes.

The officers ordered him to stop, but he continued and was almost struck by a passing vehicle as he crossed the northbound lanes, said Lt. Gloria Rundle of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

She said the officers caught up with Martinez, who tried to grab one officer’s gun. As Martinez tussled with the officers, one of them used pepper spray to subdue him, Rundle said.

The officers called an ambulance because Martinez was in “medical distress,” according to a Sheriff’s Department statement.

“Nothing is clear right now. Whether he had a previous condition, whether he was intoxicated, we don’t know,” Rundle said.

Officers from the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at San Onofre, the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton and deputies from the Encinitas sheriff’s station were also dispatched to the scene.

The cause of Martinez’ death has not yet been determined, authorities said.