Couple in Camper Abduct 2 Chatsworth Girls, Kill 1

A middle-aged couple in a motor home abducted two Chatsworth teen-agers Saturday and shot them, killing one, Los Angeles police reported.

The body of the dead girl, a 14-year-old who had been shot in the head, was found stuffed in the back of a green Ford station wagon abandoned on Woolsey Canyon Road near Valley Circle Boulevard. The wounded girl, 13, was found by a motorist about 1 a.m. as she walked dazed down a road in Chatsworth.

She was taken to Humana Hospital West Hills in Canoga Park for treatment of a minor wound, a hospital spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman said the girl was transferred to another hospital, which she would not identify.

Police Lt. Warren Knowles said the girls were friends and lived on opposite sides of a block. One girl was walking the other home about 12:30 a.m. when they were forced into a motor home by a middle-age man and woman who drove them to the station wagon about six miles away and shot them, Knowles said.

Knowles would not say whether the girls had been sexually assaulted. He would not say where, or with what kind of gun, they were shot.

Several neighbors said they had noticed the motor home parked on their street before the shooting. “No one saw them do anything suspicious,” Knowles said.

Knowles said that the motive was unknown and that the abduction and slaying did not appear to have been planned. “A sudden opportunity just presented itself,” he said.

Knowles declined to reveal the girls’ names or where the abduction occurred, saying only that it took place near Devonshire Street in Chatsworth.

The wounded girl told police that the couple talked about cocaine, and Knowles said it is believed that they were using the drug.

The suspects were described as a white man in his mid-50s, with grayish-white hair, 5-feet-9, 170 pounds and wearing only blue jeans. His companion was described as a thin, white woman in her 40s, 5-feet-4, with brown, straight shoulder-length hair, wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a dark vest or sweater.

Neighbors said the couple drove a white or light-tan motor home about 20 feet long with brown trim, Knowles said.