A suspect was caught allegedly stealing from the USC Sephora on Wednesday morning, which resulted in an on-foot pursuit after the suspect pepper sprayed an LAPD officer outside of the USC Village.
Students witnessed multiple police cars and a helicopter by the Village crosswalk around 11 a.m, as well as police officers all around.
“It looks like there was a confrontation with the officers…in which one of our officers were pepper sprayed in the face by the suspect,” said LAPD Lieutenant Southwest Detective Carlos Chavez.
According to USC DPS Sergeant Albert Lopez, the suspect first took off running from the officers toward Adams and Portland streets.
The chase happened next to the USC Jewish Hillel Center, across from the West Jefferson Boulevard entrance into the USC campus before being detained by LAPD.
“This incident happened off-campus, and the suspect is in custody, there’s no threat to the community at this point,” Lopez said.
USC TrojansAlert, the university emergency notification system, did not send out an alert to students or faculty about this incident.
The DPS communications team did not reply for further comment on the incident. The case is under LAPD for further investigation.
Edited By Leo Li and Fashion Castillo