COSTA MESA : 3-Hour Search Fails to Uncover Suspects

About 25 police officers, aided by police dogs and two helicopters, searched a neighborhood Wednesday west of South Coast Plaza’s Crystal Court for three men suspected of stealing a car at gunpoint in Santa Ana.

After a three-hour search of back yards, parking lots and nearby streets, police called off the search, saying they had found no suspects.

Costa Mesa police were called to a residential neighborhood near Sunflower Avenue and Smalley Road after a resident reported that one of three men in a parked 1986 Jaguar had pointed a gun at her, Police Sgt. Gary L. McErlain said. The car left the area and headed east on Sunflower as police arrived, he said.

After a brief chase, the three men abandoned the Jaguar XJ-6 at the top level of the Crystal Court parking structure near Robinson’s department store. Police were unsure whether the men fled through the parking lot or over the wall into a neighboring residential tract, McErlain said.

With the help of Santa Ana officers and helicopters from Anaheim and Newport Beach, police sealed off a half-mile-square residential area west of the shopping center and used police dogs to search back yards.

The search, which started at about 2 p.m., put a scare throughout the quiet neighborhood behind Crystal Court.

“We’re all paranoid about it,” said Lena Day, 66, from behind the locked door of her home at Azalea Drive and Begonia Avenue. “We’re afraid to open the door for anybody.”

Two officers with a police dog searched her yard after asking her if she kept a dog in the back yard, Day said.

“They had their guns drawn and they searched through my yard,” she said.

McErlain said that police suspected that the Jaguar had either been stolen or used in an armed robbery in Santa Ana earlier in the day. But Santa Ana police were unable to confirm any incident.

The search was called off about 5:15 p.m.

Day said the police search made her feel unsafe in what had been a quiet neighborhood for the last 12 years.

“I like to turn off the air-conditioning in the afternoon and leave my back windows open,” she said. “But I’m not doing that anymore.”