The officer whose CHP truck was stolen had gotten out to help the man who took his truck.

The incident started about 2:08 p.m. on Interstate 5, about three miles north of Patterson, said Officer Mike Panelli of the CHP's Los Banos office.

A Highway Patrol officer saw a black pickup, stopped, partly blocking the right-hand lane, Panelli said. The officer, Rob Near of the CHP's commercial division near San Luis Obispo, was driving a pickup with the CHP logo and emergency lights.

Near pulled over and stopped his vehicle behind the disabled pickup. He did that to protect the pickup from oncoming traffic, and left the keys in his vehicle, said CHP Sgt. Jon Baker of the Los Banos office.

Near saw a man walking on the other side of the freeway, Panelli said. The man crossed the highway on foot and spoke to Near, mostly in Spanish, saying he was out of gas.

Near leaned against the pickup and tried to push it out of the traffic lane, Panelli said.

That's when Near saw his patrol pickup drive by him. The man who had run out of gas was driving, he said.

As the pickup drove away, Near called CHP dispatch on his cell phone.

The stolen CHP truck, with emergency lights blazing, was headed east on Highway 140 when another CHP officer caught sight of it, Panelli said. That officer turned around, to follow the stolen vehicle.

"The pickup was going around 100 miles an hour," Panelli said.

The pursuing officer caught up with it at Highway 33, he said, but the pickup did not stop. It continued south, with the CHP unit in pursuit.

The CHP stopped the stolen pickup by placing a spike strip on Highway 33 at the Marshall Road intersection, Panelli said. "All four tires went flat."

The driver pulled over to the side of the road, and "gave himself up with no further incident," Panelli said.

Jose Omar Santibanez-Moreno, 27, of San Jose, was arrested on a charge of stealing the CHP vehicle, Panelli said. The black pickup also had been reported as a stolen vehicle.