Thieves Run Out of Gas on Freeway; 3 Suspects Seized, 9 Others Sought

Memo to car thieves: Always check the fuel gauges.

A gang that neglected to do so started running out of gasoline on Los Angeles freeways early this morning after stealing nine automobiles from a lot in Silver Lake, kidnaping a security guard at gunpoint and taking him on a wild, 20-mile ride, police said.

The guard, shaken but unhurt, said he leaped from the car in a bid for freedom when it sputtered to a halt on the Santa Ana Freeway.

“The guy fired three shots at me as I took off, but he missed,” the 29-year-old guard, David Ochoa, said later. “I’ve never run so fast in my life. I didn’t get off that freeway until the first off-ramp. It must have been three miles.”

The scheme was foiled when two officers pulled to the shoulder after seeing four of the cars stopped on the Hollywood Freeway. According to the Highway Patrol, the driver of one of the cars tried to run them down, prompting the officers to fire several shots.

The driver sped off, apparently uninjured, but his bullet-riddled car was found abandoned a few blocks away.

Officers looking for some of the stolen cars were flagged down by a witness at a downtown service station, who told them he had seen something suspicious--men getting out of three cars and climbing into a van that was being filled at one of the gasoline pumps.

Officers approached the van at gunpoint and arrested three of the suspects--two juveniles and an adult. As many as nine other suspects remained at large.

Ochoa, using his brother, Ruben Ochoa, 23, as an interpreter, said he was working the overnight shift at The Shipping Co. lot at the rear of 4408 W. Santa Monica Blvd. when a van drove up and 10 to 12 men got out and approached him at gunpoint.

“They made me give them the key to the gate and the keys to the cars,” Ochoa said. “Then they picked out the cars, the ones they liked the most. They took four (Mazda) Miatas, a VW, an Aerostar van, a Pontiac Fiero, a Cadillac and a 914 Porsche.”

Apparently unknown to the thieves, Ochoa said, the company drains most of the fuel--”all but a gallon or so”--out of the cars before loading them into vans for shipment across the United States.

“And I didn’t tell them,” he said.

The security guard said one of the gunmen forced him into the Porsche, and the two of them headed south on the Santa Ana Freeway.

“We were about at the 605 (Freeway, in the Downey area) when the Porsche ran out of gas,” Ochoa said. “The guy got out to see what was wrong, and I took off.”

Ducking bullets as he ran, Ochoa said, he finally outdistanced his pursuer, dashed down an off-ramp to a pay phone and called his brother.

“I was OK,” he said. “But I’ve had an ulcer. I don’t think it helped that very much.”