Insurance agent remembers training, catches suspect

Warren Keith no longer wears a police badge, but his training kicked in this week when he chased down a suspected hit and run driver in Yuma.

Keith, a former San Francisco Bay area police officer turned insurance agent in Yuma, helped Yuma police arrest a man who allegedly fled on foot through an alley after the car he was driving struck a wall at 8th Street and 8th Avenue on Monday afternoon, police said.

Keith was an officer for the Daly City Police Department from 1973 to 1978.

Now a district manager for Farmers Insurance, Keith was at his office on Monday when his wife, who works in the same office, told him an accident had occurred across the street, he said this week in a telephone interview from Las Vegas, where he was attending a business conference.

He ran out to see if there was anything that he could do, he said, and was told by bystanders that the driver had run down the alley. Keith said he followed the driver down the alley, chasing him to the 400 block of 10th Avenue, where the driver stopped and sat on the ground.

The driver told him to leave him alone, Keith said, but "I told (the driver) that he left too much damage behind."

"I just chased him till enough people called the police. I told him to stop because he was hurt and had a cut on his head and gash on left arm, and he wasn't getting away and he was getting tired."

The driver was identified by police as Juan Martinez, 23. Police said he had been driving a 2004 Cadillac west on 8th Street when he lost control of the vehicle, which then hit a utility pole and toppled the wall.

Alcohol is suspected to be a factor in the incident, police spokesman Officer Clint Norred said Wednesday. Charges are pending toxicology reports, he said.

In the car at the time of the accident was a male passenger who received cuts, Keith said. Norred said the passenger fled a short distance from the car but was later detained by police. He has not been charged.

Joe Grant, a Farmers Insurance agent who works out of the same office as Keith, said he was surprised when he heard Keith had chased down the driver. But now he says it's likely that Keith's instincts as a former police officer kicked in and "he probably didn't think about it, he just did it."

Keith says his actions are not a big deal.

"I did what I thought was the right thing to do."

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Jennifer Lovell can be reached at jlovell@yumasun.com or 539-6849.