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Man arrested after fleeing police officer at nearly 100 miles per hour in Palm Desert

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A man who refused to stop for a sheriff's deputy on Thursday led officers on a nearly 100 mph chase before briefly escaping – but was eventually arrested while hiding in a bedroom closet in Palm Desert .

The incident began around 5:26 a.m. when a motorcycle trooper attempted to stop a vehicle for speeding at Fred Waring Drive and Cook Street in Indian Wells, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

But sergeant. Don Olson said the man, later identified as 38-year-old Paul Claudio Piermartiri of Palm Desert, refused to stop. Piermartiri fled from the deputy, reaching speeds of nearly 100 miles per hour and traveling westbound in the eastbound lanes of Fred Waring Drive at Portola Avenue. The officer lost sight of the vehicle but later found it in the 44-500 block of San Pascual Avenue in Palm Desert, a little more than a mile west of where the pursuit began.

According to the news release, officers surrounded the apartment and ordered residents to go outside. After hours of no response, officers obtained a search warrant, entered the home with the help of the Special Enforcement Bureau and found Piermartiri hiding in a bedroom closet.

He was “uncooperative,” Olson said, but with the help of a sheriff's K-9, officers took Piermartiri into custody and took him to the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio.

Piermartiri was charged with suspicion of evading, resisting or delaying a police officer, possession of an unregistered firearm by a felon, and violating the terms of his post-release community supervision in a previous case, said the sheriff's department.

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