A Desert Hot Springs man accused of breaking into a home late Thursday night and assaulting a man and a woman inside was arrested after a vehicle pursuit that ended when Riverside County deputies stopped his vehicle with a grappler pursuit-intervention device, the Desert Hot Springs Police Department said Friday.
Source: MyNewsLA / City News Service
Jesse Lee Cormier, 37, of Desert Hot Springs, was booked into the Benoit Detention Center in Indio on suspicion of first-degree burglary, felony domestic violence, battery, violation of a restraining order, felony resisting arrest and felony evading, Lt. Christopher Saucier of the Desert Hot Springs Police Department told City News Service on Friday. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail, the department said.
An 11:20 p.m. call on Sumac Drive
Officers responded to a report of a home invasion at about 11:20 p.m. on Thursday, November 12, in the 12000 block of Sumac Drive in Desert Hot Springs, a city in the Coachella Valley of Riverside County. Arriving officers learned that the suspect was subject to a domestic-violence restraining order when he allegedly broke into the residence and assaulted the two people inside, police alleged.
Saucier said he could not disclose the exact relationship between the suspect and the two people assaulted, except that “they were known to each other.” The circumstances behind the alleged assault were not immediately available, and police have not released the names or conditions of the man and woman who were attacked.
The pursuit, and the phone calls that changed it
The suspect had fled the scene before officers arrived, police said. Officers later located him inside a vehicle and attempted a traffic stop, but he refused to yield, prompting a vehicle pursuit. “During the pursuit, the suspect made phone calls expressing that he wanted officers to kill him,” the department stated.
The nature of those alleged phone calls led officers to call in assistance from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department K-9 team, which responded with a grappler vehicle pursuit intervention system. The pursuit ended when deputies were able to successfully stop the vehicle with the grappler, police said.
A grappler is a pursuit-intervention system mounted on a law-enforcement vehicle that deploys a strap or net to entangle a fleeing vehicle's rear wheel, bringing it to a controlled stop without the ramming or spinning manoeuvres used in older pursuit tactics. Desert Hot Springs police say it was the tool that ended this chase.
What happens next
After the grappler stopped the vehicle, Cormier refused to exit and barricaded himself inside, prompting officers to deploy what police described as “less-lethal options.” He was ultimately taken into custody and transported to the Benoit Detention Center in Indio. The charges are allegations: Cormier has not been convicted, and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. Police have not announced a first court date in the information released so far, and the investigation into the alleged assault on Sumac Drive is continuing.
For readers across the Coachella Valley — a desert corridor carried by Interstate 10 between Los Angeles and Phoenix, and home to a large Punjabi trucking community — the case is a reminder of how quickly a domestic-violence call can escalate into a multi-agency pursuit, and why officers reached for a wheel-entangling device rather than letting a chase run through residential streets at night.