Returning to Crime Scene Doesn’t Pay: Parolee Shot

Awakened after his wife heard sounds in their Leisure World apartment early Monday, a 76-year-old man shot an intruder who turned out to be a recently paroled burglar back in the neighborhood of his previous crimes, Seal Beach police said.

Leslie C. Maurer, 34, of Santa Ana, was wounded in the right armpit but fled from the Seal Beach retirement community and led police on a high-speed motorcycle chase, Sgt. John Walkman said. Maurer was arrested an hour later, at 3 a.m., on suspicion of burglary and was taken to Fountain Valley Regional Hospital, Walkman said.

Intruder Unarmed

Roy Johnson, awakened when his wife heard someone break into the apartment, confronted Maurer at 2 a.m. with a flashlight and a .22-caliber revolver, Walkman said. When Maurer advanced toward him in the dark, Johnson fired once, police said. Maurer was unarmed.

Johnson declined Monday to discuss the incident, but Harold Johnson, a neighbor and former work colleague who is not related to Roy Johnson, described the retired laboratory technician as a feisty man.

“Roy is like that--he doesn’t take any bull,” Johnson said.

In November, 1985, Maurer was convicted of seven counts of burglary in Orange County and was sentenced to four years in state prison, according to the state Department of Corrections. He was released on parole last month.

Seal Beach Detective Charles Castagna, investigating a string of burglaries at Leisure World over the last three weeks, recognized a pattern that was similar to early-morning break-ins at the retirement community in 1985, Walkman said.

Looking through the old files and comparing information there with the current burglar’s method of operation, Castagna figured the man was likely to try again Monday or Tuesday, Walkman said. And Maurer became the No. 1 suspect.

Shortly before 2 a.m. Monday, Seal Beach police on a stakeout in the northeast corner of Leisure World, where seven apartments had recently been burglarized, saw a man park his motorcycle and clamber over an eight-foot wall topped with barbed wire, Walkman said.

Inside the retirement community, police lost sight of the man in the darkness, but a check of his motorcycle license plate showed that Leslie Maurer was the owner, Walkman said.

Pursuit Begins

Minutes later, Grace Johnson heard someone pull the screen off a window in the bedroom next to the one she and her husband shared, police said. She waked her husband, who encountered Maurer in the living room, police said.

After he was shot, the would-be burglar ran from the house back to his motorcycle, Walkman said.

Maurer raced away with several unmarked police cars in pursuit, Walkman said. He turned off the Garden Grove Freeway at Valley View Street and made a wrong-way entry to the San Diego Freeway. At that point, Walkman said, authorities called off the pursuit because of danger to the public.

About 3 a.m., an off-duty Huntington Beach police officer saw a man on a motorcycle trying to stop motorists for help on Beach Boulevard in Westminster, Walkman said. Suspicious, the officer called Westminster police, who had heard a radio call about the earlier pursuit and arrested Maurer.

Walkman said Maurer was in guarded condition and was to be transferred today to a medical ward in Orange County Jail where he would be held in lieu of $25,000 bail.