Man Ordered to Stand Trial on Murder Charge in Chase

GLENDALE — A former thrift-shop owner Monday was ordered to stand trial on a murder charge in connection with a brief police chase that ended with the death of a Burbank man.

Authorities said domestic-violence suspect Michael David Caudill was fleeing police when his van slammed into a pickup truck Feb. 5, killing its driver as his son watched from another vehicle. Caudill was bound over for trial after a two-day preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge Barbara Lee Burke.

The 36-year-old Los Angeles man, now in a wheelchair because of his injuries, had allegedly beaten his estranged girlfriend, 53-year-old Mary Johnson, moments before the accident.

Glendale Police Officer Sean Frank received the abuse call in his squad car and spotted Caudill’s red van about 7 p.m. about 10 blocks from Johnson’s Glendale apartment, police said.

After trailing the van for several blocks and running its license plate through his computer, Frank turned on his lights and siren and the vehicle sped away, he testified.

About six blocks later, the van crossed the double-yellow line and collided head-on, at what Frank estimated to be more than 70 mph, with a pickup driven by contractor Ernest Ralph Hauser, 68, who died at the scene. With passenger Pete McGrath, Hauser had been following his son’s pickup on northbound Verdugo Road just south of Colorado Street.

“I saw it in the rear-view mirror,” the victim’s still-shaken son, 42-year-old Ernest Hauser Jr. of Burbank, said in an interview.

With his own 13-year-old son beside him, Hauser Jr. watched as the fleeing van passed him and then looked into the rear-view mirror after hearing the collision, which sent his father’s truck spinning, he said.

McGrath, 62, was severely injured. “All I know is that I saw some bright lights shining at me and the next thing I know, I’m in the hospital five days later,” he said in an interview.

Alleging that police negligently engaged in a chase at a time of heavy weekday traffic, Atty. Joel Warren filed a claim against the city on April 16 seeking $10 million on behalf of Hauser Jr., his son, Matthew, and Hauser Jr.’s sister, Caressa. Filing a claim is the legal prerequisite to the filing of a lawsuit, which can be brought only if the claim is rejected.

City Atty. Scott H. Howard, whose staff has yet to respond to the claim, said state law holds that a municipality is not liable for damages or injuries if its police department has a pursuit policy conforming to the state vehicle code. Glendale’s does, according to his judgment.

Of the brief pursuit, Sgt. Rick Young said, “It’s a tough one for us to even call it a chase . . . By the time [officers] got up there, he’d already crashed.”

Defense attorney James Brewer, saying that Caudill showed no malice in his flight, asked Burke to dismiss the case against his client. But she denied the motion, accepting the argument by Deputy Dist. Atty. David Walgren that the defendant showed “wanton disregard of life.”

Caudill was charged with murder, being under the influence of methamphetamines and four other felony counts. He was being held in lieu of $1 million bail and is due to be arraigned July 1 in Pasadena Superior Court.