“He was very dangerous because he tried to throw things at the police,” Per Vikman, duty officer for the Bergslagen police region, told The Local. “But out in the country, it’s not such a problem because there are no other cars. It was mainly in the forest.”
At around 8am on Sunday morning, the man spotted a municipal car sitting outside the central station in the city of Örebro, unlocked with its keys in the ignition.
He leapt in and drove off, with the surprised railway workers alerting the police almost immediately after.
Before long, the madcap thief was being tailed.
Police made their first concerted attempt to stop him around 40km north of the city, when another patrol ambushed him by throwing a spike strip or 'stinger' across the road.
But the man managed to swerve around the device without his tyres being punctured, and drove on.
He appears to have then realised he would have to do something more if he was to have a chance of escaping, so he threw a chainsaw and fire extinguisher out onto the road in front of his pursuers.
The police managed to avoid the obstacles and kept on his tail, driving him onto a second spike strip laid outside Skinnskatteberg in next-door Västmanland County.
This time, two of his tyres were punctured, but even this didn’t stop the thief. He carried on for a further 20 minutes before a third spike strip punctured his remaining two tyres and brought him eventually to a halt.
Vikman said he was not yet aware what explanation the man had given for his extraordinary escapade, or what charges police planned to bring.
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