Burglary Suspect : Youth Shot in Struggle With Officer

A 16-year-old boy was shot in the groin early Monday during a struggle with a Garden Grove policeman, who was trying to arrest him on suspicion of burglarizing several cars, authorities said.

The Garden Grove youth, whose name was not released because of his age, was in critical but stable condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he underwent surgery Monday morning, a hospital spokesman said.

Garden Grove police described the wound as “not life-threatening.” A second suspect in the car break-ins escaped and was still being sought, police said.

A joint investigation is being conducted by the Garden Grove Police Department and the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Garden Grove Police Lt. Stu Finkelstein said two officers were dispatched at about 2:30 a.m. to an apartment complex in the 1200 block of Laguna Street. There was a report of “two subjects” in the alley and “a series of car burglaries,” Finkelstein said.

Chase Over Fences

One officer arrived, spotted two figures in the alley behind 12061 Laguna St. and confronted them, Finkelstein said. When the suspects fled in opposite directions, he said, the officer began chasing one of them over backyard fences with his service gun drawn.

The officer, whose name was not released, stopped the teen-ager and tried to arrest him, but the youth resisted and the pair wrestled briefly, Finkelstein said. The youth was shot once in the groin as he and the officer jostled, he said.

The second officer arrived at the scene after the first patrolman, but he did not witness the shooting, Finkelstein said.

Property believed stolen from cars in the area was recovered near the site of the shooting, he added.

Finkelstein said he did not know how many times the officer fired his weapon at the youth, stating that only the district attorney’s investigators could confirm that by opening the gun to check the ammunition still in the weapon.

Wayne Fields, who supervises officer-involved shooting investigations for the district attorney, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Some details that police did not provide were offered by John Webb, 46, and other residents who live near the shooting site in a neighborhood one block from the Crystal Cathedral.

It was in Webb’s tiny backyard, he said, that the youth was shot before flopping over a wooden fence into the patio of a next-door neighbor.

“They were looking for spent shells and found two after the sun came up,” Webb said Monday.

Webb’s Recollection

According to Webb, officers investigating the shooting in his backyard described the events as follows:

The officer spotted the youths in the alley and ordered them to stop. One did, the other ran around the corner. The remaining youth started walking slowly, then broke into a run. The officer followed.

The youth broke Webb’s fence as he climbed over it, with the officer right behind him. The pair struggled. A shot was fired--possibly as the teen-ager was halfway over the next fence--and the burglary suspect flopped on his back in the adjacent yard of Hiep Tran.

“I heard a pop and then two more rapid ones, and I rolled out of bed,” Webb said. “I knew right away it was shots, and it scared the hell out of me--and I was in Vietnam.”

Webb said he peered through a broken spot in the fence and could see the young suspect lying on his neighbor’s patio, moaning and claiming that he had been wounded.

‘A Lot of Trouble’

“He was a Spanish fellow, about 5-feet-8, wearing a white T-shirt and blue Levis, which they took off trying to find where he was wounded,” Webb said. “The kid was giving them a lot of trouble, still trying to get away, kicking at them and shouting swear words at them.”

Officers found a paper bag containing “car parts and gear” outside his back gate, Webb said. They also found two spent shells while searching in his garden, he said.

It was 3 or 3:15 a.m. when the shooting occurred, said Webb, who recalled looking at his clock after rolling out of bed.

It wasn’t the first time Webb and his neighbors have experienced this kind of excitement.

“This happened six years ago, only the suspect came from the other direction,” Webb said of a 1979 police pursuit through his yard.

“They wounded the guy in the buttocks, and it was the same kind of damage to the fence. It’s like deja vu !”