Girl, 4, Found Safe; Kidnap Suspect Slain

A suspected kidnaper was shot to death Thursday by police who then traced his victim--a 4-year-old girl--to the Van Nuys apartment where she had been held captive and returned her to her parents.

Police said the girl, Deanna Jin, appeared to be unharmed.

But her mother vowed to give up her job at the family business to stay home with her and said she may move away from the affluent Laurel Canyon neighborhood where they have lived for four years.

The suspect, Erez Bar-Levav, 24, died in a hail of gunfire after a wild 65-m.p.h. chase through the San Fernando Valley.

Reconstructing events, Los Angeles Police Lt. Charles Higbie said the kidnap-for-ransom plot began Monday, when Bar-Levav, a native of Israel, came to the Tianna Road home of Jun and Kum Jin in the Laurel Canyon Park area, posing as a real estate assessor.

Deanna was home with the family’s housekeeper, who speaks only Korean, and Bar-Levav left after only a few minutes, Higbie said.

But he returned Wednesday. Higbie said the housekeeper was in a different part of the house this time and Bar-Levav was admitted by the child, who recognized him from the earlier visit and--perhaps enticed by the offer of a piece of jewelry--accompanied him when he left 10 minutes later.

When the housekeeper discovered that Deanna was missing, Higbie said, she telephoned the Jins at their office in the downtown garment district and called them home. The Jins called police.

“Beginning about 3 p.m.,” Higbie said, “they (the Jins) got a series of calls from the suspect, where he was demanding a large sum of money--$20,000--and indicating he had the child and would harm her if the money was not delivered.”

The kidnaper also gave the Jins instructions on how the money was to be paid, and those instructions were followed--but with one major change:

At 12:30 a.m. Thursday, the Jins’ car was driven as ordered to a telephone booth in Studio City. But instead of Jun Jin, the man behind the wheel was a disguised police undercover officer.

At the booth, the officer posing as Jin was told to drive to another location for further instructions. As he was en route, however, Bar-Levav pulled alongside him and began to shout further orders.

At that point, Higbie said, unmarked police cars that had been following the Jins’ car tried to move in but Bar-Levav saw them in time to drive away at high speed.

With several cars in pursuit, he said, Bar-Levav roared through the streets at speeds up to 65 m.p.h., ran a red light at the corner of Sherman Way and Bellaire Avenue, collided with a pickup truck, made a U-turn, collided with a pursuing police car that forced him into a metal fence, tried to back away and was rammed by a second police unit.

Higbie said Officers David Harrison and Gary Strickland approached on foot and found themselves in danger from Bar-Levav, who put his car in reverse and tried to run over them.

The officers fired 10 shots, Higbie said, and Bar-Levav was pronounced dead at the scene.

Bar-Levav was identified through papers in his car, and this led police to a relative who gave them the address of the suspect’s apartment in the 7000 block of Woodman Avenue, where they found Deanna, lonely and weeping but apparently unhurt.

“I asked if she had been touched here or touched there, and she said he didn’t do anything,” said her mother, Kum Jin, struggling to express herself in English. “She said he gave her . . . a soda. She played by herself. She didn’t say what he did. She was just crying.”

The Jins had been especially concerned for their child’s safety, police explained, because Deanna had been recovering from a case of chicken pox at the time she was kidnaped. But she appeared to be healthy and in good spirits after returning home Thursday; her mother let her go into the backyard to play on her swing with an 8-year-old friend.

Nahid Thrani, who lives next door, said the Jin family’s housekeeper had frequently let the girl play unattended in the quiet street.

“She is so smart,” Thrani said, “and so friendly. She talks to everyone. That’s the problem.”

But Kum Jin told newsmen that was all in the past.

Perhaps, she said, the family will move. (“Maybe another guy will come for her, who knows?”) In any case, she said she will stay home instead of going to work each day.

Higbie said Bar-Levav, who had a record of previous arrests but no convictions, apparently acted alone; no accomplice is being sought. And there is also, he added, “a possibility that we have located another family that may have been interviewed as a victim (for) a later time.”

But Kum Jin’s thoughts were on more immediate matters.

“I was almost crazy Wednesday night,” she said. “The police are so good. I paid so many taxes and now the police did a good job.

“They found my baby girl. . . !”

Also contributing to this article was Times staff writer Boris Yaro.