A 29 year old guy called Mike Hanby was taken into custody over the weekend after robbing a convenience store in Chula Vista, San Diego with a handgun and then leading police officers on a lengthy pursuit before finally being caught. Obviously this isn’t anything new over in America so why the attention? Because the guy was in a wheelchair.

Although I’m sure all of you instantly had an image of a guy in a wheelchair racing down a hill as fat cops ran behind him struggling to keep up, the truth wasn’t exactly as fun as that. After stealing a bunch of stuff from the store, Hanby actually headed back to his maroon van – which had disabled licence plates – and made a hasty getaway. He failed to pull over when police officers signalled for him to do so and a massive pursuit began all over the city.

It got so ridiculous that a police helicopter was following him for a while and the only way that they could stop him was to put down some spike strips to blow his tyres. When the van eventually pulled into the San Diego police station with bust up tyres, Mike used a ramp to exit the vehicle, where he was met by at least 12 officers pointing rifles at him which seems a bit like overkill, no?

I suppose it’s unsure whether they knew he was disabled at this point or not though, and he had been seen with a gun earlier but still, it’s a pretty funny image that you can see above of a relatively harmless looking man in a wheelchair having a bunch of guns pointed at him. Now you know the truth though, and in reflection it was probably the right thing for the cops to do, for once.

Although as this was in America it’s kind of surprising that they didn’t just shoot him dead, like when the cop shot the mentally disabled black guy dead for shoplifting earlier this month. Guns huh?

You can watch a news report on it below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf_q3YKPuH0