Intruder Shoots 2, Is Routed by Wounded Victim

Times Staff Writers

An intruder awakened a Northridge man and his wife and shot them in the head early Tuesday morning, but the wounded man chased the gunman from his house--dodging more gunfire--then drove his wife and 4-year-old daughter to a hospital.

Christopher Petersen, 38, was in good condition at Northridge Hospital Medical Center with a bullet in his neck. His wife, Virginia, 27, was in stable condition with a wound in the face. The child was not injured.

Los Angeles Police Department spokesmen said police were looking into the possibility that the shootings were connected to a string of similar predawn attacks in homes in Glendale and the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys since March.

“I don’t know if they’re connected right now,” said Lt. Ron Lewis, head of LAPD homicide detectives. “It’s just too early. In order to determine any connection, we have to sit down and take a look at all cases.”

Series of Attacks

The series of attacks includes the killing of four people and the beating or rape of four women in June and July in the San Gabriel Valley. Monterey Park Police Chief Jon Elder said last month that, although “we can’t specifically connect the crimes . . . at this point we believe we’re looking for one suspect.”

Monterey Park police were hunting a suspect 25 to 30 years old, about 6 feet tall, weighing 160 pounds, with curly brown hair.

The Petersens could only describe their assailant to police as a man about six feet tall.

The intruder entered their house in the 18200 block of Acre Street about 2:30 a.m. through the back door, which may have been unlocked, LAPD Detective Lou Bobbitt said.

Virginia Petersen was awakened by a man standing over her bed holding a pistol, police said. She screamed and the man fired a single shot at close range.

The noise awakened Christopher Petersen, and the gunman shot him in the head.

‘Who Are You?’

“She screamed, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Then bang,” said Bill Petersen, father of the wounded man, who spoke to him in the hospital. “My son raised up in bed, and the guy shot him as he turned his head to look at his wife. That probably saved his life.”

The father said that a bullet struck Virginia Petersen on the side of her nose and passed through her head near her eye. Christopher Petersen was shot in the temple but the bullet coursed downward and lodged in his neck. Neither suffered brain damage, police said.

Physicians late Tuesday had not decided whether to remove the bullet from Petersen’s neck, his father said.

The bleeding Petersen jumped out of bed and the gunman fired at him again and missed. Petersen chased him through a hallway and the living room, his father said. The gunman fired and missed again.

Threw Himself to Floor

Christopher Petersen then threw himself to the floor in front of his daughter’s bedroom door. He was pretending that he had been hit again, so he could attack the intruder if he tried to enter the girl’s room, Bill Petersen said.

“It’s a helluva thing to do, with a gunshot to the head. It’s the protective instinct,” he said.

The couple’s daughter heard the commotion but did not leave her room until the intruder had fled, police said. She was not harmed.

Despite their wounds, the Petersens were able to move about and they phoned for help. But, before paramedics arrived, Christopher Petersen placed his wounded wife in the back of the couple’s camper-equipped pickup truck and put his child, wrapped in a bed sheet, in the front seat, leaving a trail of blood through the house and driveway.

“They passed the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” Bobbitt reported.

Neighbors said they did not hear the gunfire.

No arrests were made Tuesday.

No Signs of Theft

Detectives called theft a likely motive in the shootings but did not rule out other motives. They said there were no signs that the house, in a quiet residential neighborhood, had been ransacked or any items had been stolen, and that the house was in an unfavorable location for a thief.

Bobbitt rated police chances of finding the suspect as “fair,” adding, “Right now we’re operating on very limited clues.”

Detectives said they recovered an unspecified number of small-caliber handgun cartridges from the couple’s bedroom and also lifted fingerprints from the house.

Christopher Petersen works as a warehouse supervisor in a Van Nuys Army surplus store. Virginia Petersen is a postal clerk at Civic Center Station in Van Nuys. They have lived in the Northridge house about seven years.

Plans to Sell House

“I’m going to put it on the market,” Bill Petersen declared of his son’s house. “I’m not letting ‘em move back in there.”

Law-enforcement officials have not disclosed much about an apparent investigation into crimes involving predawn intruders in various communities. But Monterey Park Police Lt. Joe Santoro told a meeting of worried Monterey Park residents last month: “This is not something that is happening only in Monterey Park.” He said “there are several hundred police officers working on the case.”

Santoro did not elaborate, and Los Angeles police spokesmen have refused to discuss whether they are taking part in the investigation.

The San Gabriel Valley slaying victims included two women in Arcadia, both of whom were found with slashed throats, and a man and a woman in Monterey Park, who were bludgeoned to death. A Glendale couple were shot to death. A Thai immigrant was shot to death in his sleep and his wife raped at their home in Sun Valley. All the crimes were attributed to an intruder who entered the homes late at night.