Hunt for alleged axe-wielding car thief ends as stolen vehicle crashes
The two-day police search for a man who allegedly went on a crime spree in Latrobe Valley has ended with a stolen car crashing through a garden wall.
Police have arrested a 34-year-old man after a two-day hunt in Latrobe Valley that saw multiple police vehicles rammed and one officer seriously injured.
The Morwell Crime Investigation Unit had been investigating a spate of recent crimes in the area over the past five days.
The crime spree included aggravated carjacking, the ramming of a police vehicle and aggravated burglary — during which the suspect is said to have entered a house with an axe.
Police say the man was captured when the allegedly stolen red SUV crashed through the garden wall of a home on Anzac Road in Trafalgar on Wednesday morning.
The man crashed an allegedly stolen vehicle through a brick wall and into a Trafalgar resident's front yard. (ABC News: Jack Frano Colantuono)
Police said the crashed car would be towed away to be forensically tested.
'Just another day'
Homeowner Ted Dorling, 78, was working at a community vegetable patch in town when the crash occurred in his front yard.
"I got home to find a car had parked in my front garden and spat bricks everywhere and made a heck of a mess,"
Mr Dorling said.
Ted Dorling says he will make an insurance claim after someone crashed an SUV into his front yard. (ABC News: Jack Franco Colantuono)
"It's just another day, really. It happens.
"We will chase up insurance on it now and on the house insurance and see how we go, but it all takes time."
Mr Dorling said his wife, who suffers from dementia, was asleep inside the house when the driver smashed through their brick wall.
"It never woke her up, apparently,"
he said.
"This sort of stuff happens too often actually; it's just becoming a problem."
Police officer hospitalised
At about 8.30am on Wednesday, police received a tip that suggested the wanted man was driving a stolen vehicle in the town of Tyers.
Later in the morning, police saw the car in Morwell where they made two attempts to stop the driver.
Both pursuits were called off because of his dangerous driving.