SANTA ANA : Man Fleeing Police Leaps to His Death

A 20-year-old man jumped to his death from a fourth-floor apartment balcony while trying to escape police officers who were investigating a stolen car report, authorities said Wednesday.

The man, whose identity was being withheld pending notification of family, told friends and the manager of the four-story, pink apartment building shortly before he plunged off the balcony Tuesday night that he had ongoing problems with police.

“He was frightened by the police,” said the manager of the apartment complex in the 600 block of North Garfield Street, a low-income neighborhood near Civic Center Plaza. “Nobody thought he would jump.”

Officers were called to the apartment complex at about 9:50 p.m. to investigate a report of a stolen car, Police Lt. Earl Porter said.

But when they reached the barren, two-bedroom apartment into which the victim fled, they looked over the balcony and spotted the suspected car thief draped over a low concrete block wall four stories below.

Residents at the apartment complex on Wednesday described with disbelief the events that preceded the death of the man, whom they knew only as El Diablo, or the devil.

Rosa Isella Valente, 22, who moved into the apartment less than a month ago with her husband and infant child, said that the man came over earlier in the afternoon to drink beer with her husband, Santos Gimenez Tagle.

Later in the evening, the man became restless and took the keys to a car belonging to another resident. Driving off, he smashed into a garage gate.

He returned the car to the garage 40 minutes later, witnesses said, and handed the car keys to the janitor.

But the owner of the car, Alejandro Cortes, had already notified police that the man had taken his car.

When he returned, he was confronted by Cortes, the apartment manager, her son and other residents, witnesses said. As the group attempted to force the man to pay for the damages, police arrived downstairs and the man grew nervous.

“He said, ‘I want to leave because I have lots of problems with the police,’ ” the apartment manager said. “But I told him to wait because he would make the problems worse. I said it wasn’t too bad, if he paid for everything.”

As police climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, the man ran out to a rear balcony, climbed over to an adjoining unit, woke up a woman and pleaded with her to hide him, the woman said.

“He asked me to let him come in and hide,” said Ramona Luna, 24. “He said the police were looking for him. I was afraid because he smelled like alcohol.”

Returning to the Gimenez apartment, the man got into a brief shouting match with the manager’s son, Valente said. Noticing that the officers had reached the top floor and were walking toward him, he bolted back into the apartment, ran into a back bedroom and jumped from the balcony, witnesses said.

“I heard a big thump,” Luna said. “Everybody downstairs was yelling.”