A 21-year-old Lawrence man was arrested Saturday after a car chase that began in Ottawa and ended in south Lawrence.

The chase ended at 6:22 p.m. when Lawrence police used stop sticks to pop all four tires in the man’s vehicle just south of 31st and Louisiana streets, said Lt. Kari Wempe, of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.

Witnesses described the man’s vehicle as a pickup truck.

Law enforcement officers from Franklin County notified the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office at 6:04 p.m. that a chase began earlier in southern Ottawa and entered Douglas County on U.S. Highway 59, Wempe said.

Ottawa Police and Franklin County Sheriff’s officers chased the vehicle to the north. In Douglas County, the chase continued onto Wells Overbrook Road and later East 1400 Road, Wempe said. Two times before he was caught, the driver eluded stop sticks – one time by driving into the ditch, Wempe said.

Once the chase ended, officers arrested the man without incident, and he was taken to jail in Franklin County, Wempe said, and alcohol use was suspected.

One Lawrence man said he encountered the chase on U.S. 59. Dameon Reed, 23, was driving to Ottawa to pick up his fiancee, Sherry Daughenbaugh, and he had a 3-year-old child and an 18-month-old child with him.

In a 1995 Mercury Sable, as he drove up a hill near the junction with U.S. Highway 56, Reed said he saw a pickup headed toward him about one car length away in his lane.

“I could see his facial expression. He was so close. I swerved into the grass and ditch,” Reed said.

Reed said he was angry that officers chased the man for 20 miles because he believed it made the situation more hazardous. The man would have been arrested later if officers communicated his vehicle type to one another, he said.

“That shouldn’t even take place because that is endangering people’s lives,” he said.