Law Agencies Forming Task Force : 4 Men, Woman Held in Highway Shooting Death

Four young men and a woman were arrested by Pomona police Tuesday as suspects in the murder of 17-year-old Russell Joseph Pirrone, one of the victims of Southern California’s rash of freeway and roadway shootings.

The gunfire that took the life of the high school student Friday night as he drove with a friend apparently was not prompted by a traffic dispute, Pomona Police Chief Richard M. Tefank said, but by an earlier altercation between Pirrone’s male passenger and the female suspect.

Pirrone, police said, had not been involved in the argument.

Even as the arrests in the Pomona case were announced, gunfire continued to be reported. A tow truck driver said he was shot at in Sun Valley on Monday night. And a pickup truck driver told Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies that a shot was fired at him Tuesday afternoon from a car on the Pomona Freeway in Hacienda Heights.

These brought to 10 the total number of shootings since June 18. Four persons have died.

Local law enforcement authorities plan to announce this morning the formation of what the California Highway Patrol described as a countywide “freeway violence task force.”

It will coordinate investigations of all recent shootings involving motorists and will include the CHP, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. It may also involve officers from smaller agencies, officials said.

At the same time, authorities said a telephone hot line will be established to enable drivers to provide tips on unsolved shootings as well as other incidents of highway violence.

“We’ve got to do something,” said Signal Hill Police Chief Michael McCrary, president of the Los Angeles County Chiefs of Police Assn. “The way this thing is escalating, we’ve got to put a stop to it.”

In Tuesday’s reported incident in Hacienda Heights, Dan Price, 35, of Chino Hills, said he was trying to get off the eastbound freeway about 1:10 p.m. because an accident had snarled traffic. He said four men in a red Ford Fairlane pulled up in an adjacent lane and one of them pointed a gun at him.

Price said he slammed on his brakes just as the man fired. “The bullet missed the victim and it missed the truck,” Sheriff’s Information Bureau Deputy Dan Cox said. Price reportedly said that he had never seen the gunman before.

Deputies did not immediately report any other witnesses and had no explanation for the incident.

Anonymous Informant

In Pomona, Police Chief Tefank told a news conference that the arrests of five suspects followed a call from an anonymous informant who gave the names of “possible people involved” in the fatal shooting of Pirrone as he and his friend--whose name has been withheld for his safety--were on their way to get a hamburger Friday night.

“The initial motive was believed to be a result of a traffic dispute similar to other shooting incidents which have occurred on Southland freeways recently,” the chief said. “The investigation has determined this not to be the case. It is not a random shooting, and the incident is not gang-related.”

After the anonymous tip, Tefank said, investigation indicated that Pirrone’s passenger had an earlier argument with Sarah Jayne Stafford, 21, who subsequently told one of the other suspects about it. All the suspects--including Stafford--then went looking for him, the chief said.

“Quite by accident,” he said, they spotted the man they were looking for on the passenger side of Pirrone’s car as it moved from the Old Pomona Road onto California 71 in the Phillips Ranch area.

A moment later, a bullet from a .25 caliber handgun struck Pirrone in the head.

Contrary to first reports, the chief said, there apparently was no exchange of profanities. The suspects’ blue pickup truck simply drew alongside and the shot was fired.

Police identified the four men arrested as Javier Arsaga, 19; Angel Bernardo Reyes, 20, and David Robert Walsh, 19, all of Pomona, and Richard Bruce Hamilton, 19, of Montclair. The four and Stafford were booked at Pomona City Jail on suspicion of murder. No bail was set.

The police chief said a witness indicated that Arsaga did the shooting. But, he added, the investigation is continuing to determine whether that was true and to find out more about the earlier dispute between Pirrone’s friend and the young woman.

Tefank said “some information” was being obtained from certain of the suspects, but he did not say what. He noted that Pirrone’s friend had identified one of the suspects from a photo lineup on Monday, prior to the arrests.

Arraignment of the suspects will be held either this afternoon or Thursday morning, police said.

Larry Pirrone, father of the slain youth, said he is contributing $10,000 toward establishment of a scholarship fund at Damien High School in La Verne, where his son was a student.

No Letup in Shootings

There has been no letup in the freeway and roadway shootings since June 18.

On Monday night, Van Nuys tow truck driver Marty Korse, 26, was fired upon by a driver who had impeded his entry onto the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley. Korse was not injured.

Los Angeles Police Lt. Ron LaRue said Korse was trying to drive the tow truck onto the southbound freeway at Branford Street, but was blocked by a pickup truck in the slow lane of the freeway. Korse slowed, LaRue said, but so did the pickup, forcing Korse to use the freeway shoulder to accelerate ahead of it.

The pickup began tailgating Korse, who pulled back onto the shoulder, only to be followed again. After Korse steered back into the freeway, LaRue said, the pickup’s driver pulled alongside him and fired a single shot. Korse told officers it apparently went over the cab of his truck.

Korse was not injured. That gunman, too, escaped.

The shootings began June 18, when a Canyon Country man allegedly fired three wild shots at a motorcyclist on the Antelope Valley Freeway in Newhall. A suspect was arrested in that case.

June 20 Incident

The first to be murdered in the spate of shootings was Rick Lane Bynum, 24, an Orange automotive mechanic who was killed by a tailgating driver the night of June 20 while he was a passenger in a car driven by his girlfriend on the Santa Ana Freeway in Santa Fe Springs.

Two more men died Sunday night at a Sylmar stop sign where, police said, Manuel Brown Avila, 28, had stopped his car and refused to move despite the honking and demands of an unidentified motorist behind him.

Witnesses said the second motorist got out and struck Avila, then returned to his own car and got a gun. He fatally shot Avila and Angel Aguirre Barrera, 36, who was either walking past or sitting nearby and reportedly had thrown a beer bottle at the gunman.

The suspect then sped away in a beige, two-door Buick Riviera or Regal. He was still being sought Tuesday.

Another Southland man, Paul Gary Nussbaum, 28, of Rolling Hills Estates, was critically wounded and left partially paralyzed when he was shot in the neck July 18 while in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Costa Mesa Freeway near the Orange County Fairgrounds.

Albert Carroll Morgan, 32, and his wife, Lonnie, of Santa Ana, were arrested nearby after a witness gave officers a description of their truck. On Monday, Albert Morgan pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted murder.

Yet another wounded motorist was Giang Nan, 19, of Los Angeles, who was shot in the arm by another driver as the two headed for a freeway exit in Alhambra. That gunman escaped.

On Saturday afternoon, a passenger in a car following a van onto a San Diego Freeway on-ramp in Long Beach shot out the van’s rear window with a rifle or shotgun, but no one was injured.

In discussing plans for a highway task force to combat the tide of freeway shootings, Signal Hill Police Chief McCrary compared it to law enforcement’s efforts during the 1984 Olympics, when officers coordinated their efforts to deter any terrorist activity that might have disrupted the Games.

Officer Jill Angel, a CHP spokeswoman, said one of the task force’s jobs will be to determine whether highway shootings are actually on the rise. While many in local law enforcement strongly suspect that to be the case, there are no statistics readily available to indicate how many assaults have occurred in the past on Los Angeles’ streets and highways.

Added Awareness

“We’re getting a lot more calls (from citizens) than we normally get, but the question is whether the violence is increasing or are people just now starting to become more aware of this because it’s been in the news more,” Angel said.

McCrary of Signal Hill said that investigators believe that as many as four of the recent shootings involved gang activity or narcotics and may not have been examples of random roadway violence.

In a related action intended to curb those acts, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates on Tuesday directed the department’s 317 motorcycle officers to travel, whenever possible, on Los Angeles’ highways. LAPD motorcycle officers are tasked primarily with enforcing traffic laws on city streets and normally do not patrol highways, the domain of the CHP.

Times staff writers David Freed and Gabe Fuentes contributed to this story.