BERKELEY, Calif. -- A man in a car, who bolted after being confronted by the police as he sat in his vehicle, engine idling with a hose running into his window, was killed early Friday as he smashed into several cars at a high rate of speed, leaving a Berkeley street littered with twisted metal and debris.

Authorities Friday afternoon identified the dead driver as Jasper Summer, 46, of Berkeley. Police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary Kusmiss called the crash "the worst she had seen in her career."

The incident began early Friday when a cyclist noticed Summer in his car with the engine running and hose in the window parked near Bancroft and Fulton. He alerted a nearby police office, who walked up to the car, banged on the window.

Summer refused to roll down his window and instead gunned the engine, fleeing with a police cruiser in pursuit. But the officer backed off when Summer began running stop signs, swerving and driving erratically. A short time later on The Alameda Summer's vehicle hurled into several parked cars.

While several neighbors told KTVU they heard the crash, no one apparently witnessed it.

"We don’t have any witnesses to this part of this puzzle -- it appears he was driving at a high rate of speed," said Kusmiss as she stood near the wreckage. "At the beginning, the sergeant said he (the driver) was driving tremendously erratically. He was going through stop signs, red lights, crossing over the lines, nearly hitting parked cars."

The impact of the crash reduced one parked car into a pile of twisted metal in the middle of the street while the Summer's vehicle