Stakeout Nets 3 Suspected in Robbery Spree

Three men arrested early Monday in Bellflower are suspects in at least 12 robberies, three rapes and the shooting of an off-duty police officer, authorities said. The crimes occurred in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere in Southern California.

Los Angeles police said they are investigating the possibility that the men may be responsible for eight restaurant and motel robberies in Tarzana and North Hollywood and in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties from November until mid-January.

Among the crimes under investigation:

The Dec. 31 rape of a waitress by two armed men who robbed Reuben’s restaurant in North Hollywood.

The Jan. 14 robbery of JoJo’s restaurant in Tarzana. Four or five armed men herded customers and employees into a freezer, raped two women, pistol-whipped several employees and stole the restaurant’s weekend receipts.

The robbery less than an hour before the JoJo’s robbery of the Hungry Hunter restaurant in Ventura by three or four men who struck the manager on the head with a pistol.

Robberies on Nov. 18, Dec. 4 and Dec. 9 in Ventura County and two on Dec. 16. in Santa Barbara County, and other robberies in Los Angeles and Orange counties about which no information could be obtained.

Arrested Near Stakeout Site

The suspects--Bobby Gray, 27; Lorenzo Justice, 21, and Randy Fleming, 19, all of Los Angeles--were pulled from their car at Lakewood Boulevard and Maple Avenue at about 12:30 a.m. Monday near the site of a restaurant stakeout by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, Deputy Rick Adams said.

The three were being held without bail at the Lakewood Sheriff’s Station jail on suspicion of attempted murder and robbery, Adams said. Adams said he did not know what, if any, evidence links the men to the four-month, four-county string of crimes. Ventura Police Sgt. Mike Goff said the men being sought in the stakeout apparently were committing robberies similar in method to the Valley-area crimes. The incidents usually took place late at night or early in the morning as the restaurants were closing.

Adams said the stakeout was arranged after deputies received a tip that the robbers might strike a Cerritos restaurant.

Officers searched the car and found three guns, including a weapon stolen from an off-duty police officer in a Feb. 19 robbery in Long Beach.

In that robbery, three men robbed Signal Hill Officer Steven Owens of his gun and an undisclosed sum of money in the parking lot as he and his wife left a Charley Brown’s restaurant shortly after closing time. The officer’s partner, Anthony Giniewicz, 31, was fired upon when he came out of the restaurant and tried to arrest the men, who then drove away.

Giniewicz remains in Long Beach Memorial Hospital, paralyzed with a bullet in his spine.