Woman Slain in Her Car Parked in Miracle Mile

A businesswoman who was to have been a bridesmaid in her cousin’s wedding Sunday was shot and killed in the Miracle Mile district early in the weekend in what police said was a holdup as she sat in her car with a companion.

Ann Yao, 31, was pronounced dead at the scene near Wilshire and Lucerne boulevards about 2 a.m. Saturday, Los Angeles Police Detective Frank Bishop said Sunday.

Police and co-workers at the More than a Mouthful catering service, where Yao was employed, said she was one of the last to leave a wedding they had handled Friday night and was talking with a friend in her car when they were approached by two gunmen who robbed and shot them.

Yao died of a bullet wound to the left side of her head, Bishop said. Her companion, Lyle Nirenberg, 27, of Los Angeles, was treated at UCLA Medical Center for multiple flesh wounds and released.

Bishop said the thieves, using Nirenberg’s stolen car keys, fled in his car, which was found later Saturday morning near Olympic and West boulevards. Police said they have no suspects.

“We’re all very angry. It’s an incredible waste of life, and a lot of people are very upset,” Andrea Hartt, a server with the catering firm, said Sunday.

Hartt said Yao was a party coordinator and sales representative for the caterer. She studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., after graduating from Colgate University in upstate New York, where she majored in French, they said.

They described her as a smart, serious-minded woman who owned a home in Sylmar.

“She was wonderful with sales and dealt with people beautifully,” said Fred Schwartz, one of the catering company’s owners.

Schwartz said that when he arrived at work Saturday morning a building caretaker asked him to phone Yao and check on her because he had heard the shots the night before and knew they occurred about the time Yao left.

“I didn’t take it seriously. I figured I’d give her another half-hour to sleep, and then call,” Schwartz said. “In the meantime, the police called.”

Schwartz, Hartt and a third co-worker, Marnie Wilson, said Yao was supposed to be a bridesmaid Sunday in a cousin’s wedding, an event that they said had drawn family from around the world and for which Yao had taken off the weekend.

“Oh, she was wonderful,” said Wilson. “Bright, beautiful, everything that’s great. She was a very together individual.”

Yao had recently met Nirenberg at a Colgate University alumni party and invited him to meet her at work Friday night, her colleagues said.

Nirenberg, a Los Angeles attorney, could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Yao’s co-workers said she and Nirenberg left the kitchen in the Ebell Club building in the 4400 block of Wilshire at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

Yao’s car was parked behind the building, and she offered to drop Nirenberg at his car, which was parked around the corner on Lucerne.

After pulling her Honda behind Nirenberg’s Mazda, the two lingered and talked, Bishop and co-workers said.

At that point, the detective said, two men approached Yao’s car--one on the passenger side and one on the driver’s side--demanded their belongings, shot the two and fled in the Mazda.