Anaheim Ex-Officer Shoots 3 Armed Burglary Suspects

In a bloody confrontation with armed burglars, a retired police sergeant opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun, leaving one suspect brain-dead and two others critically wounded, police said Friday.

“I was scared out of my wits,” said Earl Swoap, 53, as he described his encounter with the intruders in his North Hanover Street home. “One of them pointed a gun right at my head.”

One of the alleged intruders, a 16-year-old Santa Ana boy, was pronounced brain-dead by physicians at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Two other suspects, a 17-year-old Garden Grove boy and 19-year-old Phouxay Vanhnarath of Costa Mesa, were listed in critical but stable condition Friday night, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Police said a fourth suspect, Sayavong Nanthavongdouangsy, 18, of Anaheim, was not injured. The names of the juveniles were withheld because of their ages.

Nanthavongdouangsy was being held at the Anaheim Temporary Detention Facility on suspicion of attempted robbery, according to Anaheim Police Sgt. Chet Barry.

Swoap, a Hughes Aircraft security guard who retired from the Yakima, Wash., police force 13 years ago, said he was acting in self-defense, shooting at the four teen-agers to protect himself and his wife.

It was not immediately known if Swoap will face any charges in connection with the shooting, which occurred at 9:35 p.m. Thursday, Sgt. Frank Van DeWeerd said, adding that the case was still under investigation.

Based on interviews with Swoap, police and neighbors, the following is an account of what happened:

Swoap said that he and his wife had just gone to bed when they heard a noise “that sounded like someone kicked the door in.”

Swoap said he grabbed his 12-gauge shotgun and crept into the hallway, noticing that someone had turned on a light.

Rounding a corner into the living room, Swoap came face to face with the suspects, three of whom were holding handguns, Swoap and police said.

What precisely happened next is still unclear, but police said Swoap opened fire, blasting away at the intruders as they attempted to escape out the back door.

Police said Swoap chased the intruders outside and fired again as at least two of them piled into a late-model Toyota Celica. The shotgun blasts blew out the car’s rear window and two of its tires.

It was not clear whether any of the intruders were wounded in the house or whether they returned fire.

“There was some shooting inside, and then he (Swoap) followed them out,” Van DeWeerd said.

One suspect was spotted by several neighbors running toward the end of the street. He appeared uninjured.

The car, with its driver wounded in the back of the head, veered out of control and came to rest in the front yard of a house across the street, according to several witnesses.

One neighbor, who asked not to be named, said that he heard four shots, then looked out the window and spotted a silver-colored car idling on the front lawn.

When he ran across the street to investigate, he saw one of the suspects lying on the grass next to the car, moaning and holding his legs. His face was covered with blood.

As he reached into the car to turn off the engine, the neighbor said he felt a warm body and realized that another wounded man was slumped over in the front seat. His head was bleeding profusely.

Meanwhile, the intruder who had run off apparently could not find an escape route and doubled back to the car, where he pulled the neighbor out of the way. He then opened the car door and “flung the other guy out of it like a piece of meat,” the neighbor said.

Putting the car into reverse, he stepped on the accelerator, slammed into a tree, jammed the car into first gear and bolted off, tearing out wide patches of grass. He was last seen driving north toward La Palma Avenue, witnesses said.

One of the wounded men, later identified as Vanhnarath, was last seen running in the same direction as the car, neighbors said.

Both Vanhnarath and Nanthavongdouangsy were arrested shortly afterward near Brookhurst Street and Katella Avenue.

The gunfire shattered the quiet in this tranquil neighborhood near Magnolia and Lincoln avenues. Residents congregated Friday afternoon in small clusters, recounting the night’s events.

“This is a very quiet neighborhood,” said Bob Puig, who lives across the street from Swoap. “Nothing ever happened like this before.”

In an intensive care waiting room at UCI Medical Center, the parents of the 16-year-old suspect sat limp in each other’s arms a short while after doctors told them their son would not survive the shotgun wounds in his head.

The boy’s stepfather was nearly silent, but from the mother came a torrent of words as she lapsed between English and her native Vietnamese, reminiscing about how close the family had been before leaving Vietnam in 1981. She said her son was a former Boy Scout and a youth volunteer at the Buddhist temple they attended, but he had trouble adjusting to American culture as a teen-ager.

“I am very, very angry,” the boy’s mother said, asking that she not be identified. “He did something wrong. But whoever did it (shot him) should have shot at his legs, not at his head. . . . He’s too young. The guy did it to kill.”

Meanwhile, Nanthavongdouangsy’s father, Donechanh Nanthavongdouangsy, claimed his son was not involved with the break-in and was falsely arrested.

In an interview through an interpreter, the Laotian immigrant said his son was at home about 10 p.m. when he got a phone call from Vanhnarath, who reportedly told young Nanthavongdouangsy that he was wounded and needed a ride to a hospital.

“He was not in that house,” the father said. “I don’t believe it. He was home with me.”

Police declined to comment on the father’s claim.

In recent months, there have been a rash of so-called home invasions in Orange County, in which Asian gangs have recruited teen-agers for planned robberies.

“We wish for the police to work and find whoever are the adults behind these children,” said the mother of the 16-year-old suspect. “We don’t wish to see other families experience what is our experience.”

Times staff writer Kevin Johnson contributed to this report.