1 Held, 2 Flee After Family Robbed in Santa Ana Home : Crime: Police believe the suspects belong to one of several Cambodian street gangs. The armed robbery was the latest in a series in the area blamed on the violent groups.

A suspected gang member was in custody Tuesday after he and two accomplices allegedly robbed a family at gunpoint in its Santa Ana apartment, police said.

Phan Uth, 18, of Long Beach was arrested trying to run from the scene of the Monday night robbery in the 1000 block of East Bishop Street, police spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said. Two other suspects escaped on foot, she said.

Police fired two shots at Uth after he allegedly pointed an Uzi submachine gun at officers, but he was not hit. Uth suffered a bite wound to the leg when a police dog found him hiding behind a nearby patio, Thomas said.

He was treated at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana and then booked in Orange County Jail on suspicion of robbery.

Police believe that Uth and the other two suspects are members of a Cambodian street gang.

Cambodian gangs first turned up in the county about 18 months ago and have grown to include between 50 and 100 members in as many as six gangs, said Robert C. Gates, a deputy county probation officer specializing in Asian gangs.

The gang members travel back and forth between Cambodian communities in Orange County and Long Beach, where the nation’s largest concentration of Cambodian refugees is located, Gates said.

Monday’s incident was the latest in a series of residential robberies in the Santa Ana-Garden Grove area that police attribute to Cambodian gangs.

According to police reports, three young men armed with handguns and an Uzi forced their way into the apartment on East Bishop at about 9 p.m. and demanded money and valuables from the occupants. A small boy was able to crawl out of a window and alert a neighbor as the gunmen collected jewelry, Thomas said.

Two Santa Ana patrol officers arrived as the robbery was in progress, Thomas said. One of the robbers saw the officers from a window and ran out through a back patio door. One officer went around to the side of the apartment and confronted him as he was trying to climb over a fence.

“The guy, armed with an Uzi, wheeled around like he was going to fire, and the officer fired two rounds,” said Sgt. Dennis Rios, who was an investigator at the scene. “The suspect dropped back behind the fence.”

The other two robbers, meanwhile, ran out the front door. Officers gave chase but could not find them. Officers cordoned off the neighborhood and used a helicopter and police dogs to search for the suspect with the Uzi, residence by residence, Rios said.

With the cooperation of the occupants, Rios said, police let a dog in the back patio of one apartment “and sure enough he got the suspect.”

Thomas said the suspect, later identified as Uth, had in his possession some necklaces taken in the robbery. She said police also found a semiautomatic handgun nearby him on the same patio.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron contributed to this report.