A carjacking suspect from South Sacramento crashed a stolen vehicle down an embankment near Donner Summit on Tuesday, then sprinted across all lanes of Interstate 80 on foot before officers cornered him hiding along the bank of Donner Creek. Andrew Coleman is now held without bail at the Nevada County Jail, not on the carjacking allegation itself but on a separate parole violation hold that keeps him locked up while investigators build their case.
The pursuit began roughly 100 miles from where it ended. According to CBS Sacramento, the Truckee Police Department received word around 12:30 p.m. that a stolen vehicle linked to a Sacramento carjacking was entering the community from Interstate 80 near Donner Pass Road and Richards Boulevard. That kind of rapid handoff is typical along the corridor — Northern California agencies routinely swap stolen vehicle alerts and dispatch updates to intercept cars moving east from the Sacramento metro area toward the mountains and the Nevada line, per a report on interagency coordination along the route.
Officers found the vehicle in a parking lot on Donner Pass Road near the interstate, and that's when things turned physical. Police said the suspect crashed the stolen vehicle down a nearby embankment before fleeing into a wooded area, then ran on foot across all lanes of Interstate 80 into heavily forested terrain. Officers eventually located him hiding along the bank of Donner Creek, which drains Donner Lake and flows through dense, glacially carved terrain before joining the Truckee River.
Armed and Dangerous, Police Say
Investigators said the suspect was believed to be armed and dangerous, though the station's report notes that investigators later said no weapon was found in Coleman's possession. Police identified the suspect as Andrew Coleman of South Sacramento, and officers took him into custody after the foot chase ended at the creek. The vehicle he was driving had been linked to a carjacking in Sacramento, though the full circumstances of that original crime were not detailed.
Truckee police said additional charges related to the stolen vehicle are still pending, and the investigation remains ongoing as detectives work to confirm exactly what happened before Coleman reached Truckee. Formal carjacking charges, if filed, would fall under California Penal Code § 215, which classifies carjacking as a violent felony carrying a state prison sentence of three, five or nine years. It's also designated a strike under California's Three Strikes law, meaning a conviction would require Coleman to serve at least 85 percent of whatever sentence he receives before he's eligible for parole, according to legal analysis from KEG Law.
Why He's in Jail Right Now
None of those carjacking charges are what's keeping Coleman behind bars at this moment, though. He's held on a parole violation under California Penal Code § 3056, which allows law enforcement to place a non-bailable parole hold on a parolee suspected of a violation — letting the Nevada County Jail detain him without bail while a revocation hearing is pending, as explained by Eisner Gorin LLP. That hold operates on a lower legal bar than a criminal trial: revocation hearings only require a preponderance of the evidence, meaning it's more likely than not that a violation occurred, rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
In practical terms, that distinction means Coleman could remain in custody on the parole matter well before prosecutors formally decide whether to pursue carjacking charges tied to the Sacramento incident. Truckee itself is a Sierra Nevada mountain community of roughly 16,000 residents in Nevada County, patrolled alongside the California Highway Patrol along the state highway corridors that ring the town — a small-town police force suddenly thrust into a freeway-crossing manhunt that started nearly 100 miles away in the Central Valley.
The Broader Crime Picture
The chase comes amid a mixed statewide crime picture. A California Department of Justice report released in July showed statewide motor vehicle theft dropped 19 percent and overall robbery rates fell 31 percent in 2025 compared to 2019 levels. But locally, Sacramento hasn't followed that trend evenly — a Major Cities Chiefs Association report from May found Sacramento police recorded 220 robberies in the first quarter of 2026, up slightly from 211 during the same period in 2025.
