Car Fire Death Is Called Murder : Crime: A suspect is arrested near the victim’s Laguna Hills home as he tries to hitch a ride out of the area. Investigators seek a motive in the death.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a young woman outside her home Friday by deliberately ramming his car into her car, which moments later burst into flames.

Ghaffari Hossein, 34, who told deputies he was from Canada, was arrested about four hours after the collision when deputies found him trying to hitch a ride at an intersection near the victim’s Laguna Hills home.

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Richard J. Olson said there was a “strong odor” of a flammable substance inside the victim’s vehicle. He added that the car’s fuel tank was intact, but he would not confirm whether Hossein is suspected of igniting the vehicle.

Olson also would not release the victim’s name or age. Friends of the victim would identify her only as “Manija,” and said she was in her mid-20s.

Investigators were trying to determine a motive. The incident occurred about 9 a.m. as the victim was leaving for work.

Olson alleged that Hossein parked his 1978 Toyota in a lot across from the woman’s home in the 25000 block of Via Lomas and waited for her to get in her car, which was parked on the two-lane street.

“Then he accelerated at a high speed and hit her vehicle, knocking it over the curb onto the lawn in front of a residence,” Olson said.

At the scene, a quiet condominium complex, dozens of sheriff’s deputies spent hours sorting through a mass of burned wires in the woman’s Honda sedan and through the mangled yellow car driven by her assailant.

Witnesses interviewed at the scene said the woman’s brother, unable to rescue her from the burning car, tried frantically to douse the flames with a garden hose.

“He was just crying (while) trying to put the fire out,” said Rick Amato, who spotted the car engulfed in flames as he drove down Alicia Parkway.

“There were a lot of people standing around the car, and they could have saved her, but everyone was afraid that the car would blow up,” Amato said, adding that neighbors could not understand the brother’s cries for help because he was speaking in a foreign language.

Neighbors said the victim and her family were Iranian immigrants who spoke little English and who had lived in the home for about a year.

Deputies were tipped off to Hossein’s whereabouts, near the corner of Alicia Parkway and Paseo De Valencia, by witnesses who said they saw a bleeding man fleeing on foot from the scene.

“He was running up the middle of Alicia Parkway, trying to wipe the blood off his face with a towel,” Amato said.

Investigators found a bloodied jacket on the lawn in front of the woman’s home and bloody fingerprints on the entry gate, as well as a bloodied towel, witnesses said.

Hossein is being held in the jail ward at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana for treatment of minor injuries, Olson said. An autopsy on the victim is scheduled today.

Throughout Friday, more than a dozen friends and relatives of the victim gathered outside the family home to console one another. Most declined comment.

Another of the victim’s brothers, who arrived late Friday afternoon from the central California coastal community of Santa Maria, burst into tears when friends described the events that killed his sister. “I can’t talk right now,” he said, wiping his eyes.

“We don’t know anything except that she was on her way to work,” said family friend Tom Bulgari.