Police Kill Suspect in Ortega Hwy. Attack

A Hollywood man who allegedly fired at a California Highway Patrol officer on Ortega Highway last weekend was shot and killed Thursday afternoon in an exchange of gunfire with police, officers said.

The dead man was identified as Steven Douglas Flowers, 37. A few hours before he was killed, Flowers telephoned the CHP office in Santa Ana and threatened to kill law enforcement officers at $5 a head, authorities said.

His body lay in the parking lot of Arby’s Restaurant in the 5900 block of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood for more than two hours after the mid-afternoon shooting while Lt. William Hall, who heads the Los Angeles Police Department’s officer-involved shooting unit, directed an investigation.

Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon said patrolling officers had spotted Flowers in a telephone booth at Western Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.

“Literally, as an officer was pulling (Flowers’) picture out of his pocket, the suspect quickly jumped into his car and sped off,” Vernon said.

Police gave chase and Flowers began firing at pursuing officers with a modified M-1 carbine, Vernon said. The chase ended when Flowers crashed his pickup truck on Sunset, got out and continued firing at police, investigators said.

No officers were hit, but Flowers was shot several times.

Eyewitness Roy Hill, 48, a beer salesman from Mission Hills, said he was making a delivery at a delicatessen next to Arby’s when he saw a silver pickup smash into another vehicle. He said the pickup’s driver got out, fired at police and walked slowly toward Arby’s.

“He didn’t look frantic,” Hill said. “He was just walking. I figured he was going into Arby’s to take hostages. He was walking so slowly, it appeared like he was looking for the door.

“It’s like he wanted to commit suicide.”

The shoot-out came only hours after Flowers called the CHP dispatch center in Santa Ana on the 911 emergency number and indicated that he planned to take revenge on officers for a search of his Hollywood apartment. He claimed that about $4,000 was taken.

“He said he was going to start killing officers if he didn’t get his $4,000 back and each officer is worth $5,” CHP Officer Lyle Whitten said.

Dispatchers kept talking with Flowers to hold him on the line long enough to trace the call, Whitten said. In the two minutes before Flowers hung up, the CHP traced the call to a pay phone at a restaurant in Orange County on Lake Forest Drive near Interstate 5.

CHP officers and Orange County sheriff’s deputies converged on the site within minutes, but Flowers had left, according to Whitten. He said that witnesses at the scene positively identified Flowers as the man who had called.

According to deputies, Flowers was suspected of drug trafficking. They said he had three aliases and a history of “violent confrontations” with police. He had been named in an attempted-murder warrant after Saturday’s shooting incident on Ortega Highway.

The highway was closed for 14 hours Saturday as authorities combed the area for a man who fired at a CHP officer at the end of a chase on the twisting, mountainous road.

Police disclosed Thursday that Flowers had arrests dating back to 1972, including charges of narcotics trafficking, theft, drunk driving and assault on a police officer.

Times staff writer John Kendall contributed to this story.