Stuntman Arrested in Killing of Roommate : Violence: Victim was a suspect in the rape of a family friend. Sheriff’s deputies had shot to death another man at the house Friday.

A Hollywood stuntman was arrested Saturday in the fatal shooting of a man he suspected of sexually assaulting a family friend, in the latest of a bizarre chain of events that began Friday when another man died in a gun battle with sheriff’s deputies.

Gary Raymond McLarty, 49, actor Vic Morrow’s double in the film “Twilight Zone,” was arrested about 8 a.m. by Los Angeles police after telling authorities he had killed a man “in fear of his life,” said Detective James Boissier.

The victim, a 49-year-old ex-convict who had been staying at McLarty’s home, was wanted on suspicion of sexual battery and oral copulation with a 21-year-old woman who was a long-time friend of McLarty, said Boissier. Deputies would not identify him.

On Friday, deputies had gone to McLarty’s home in the hills above Sylmar to arrest the man. While there, they exchanged gunfire with Edward Lynn Ralston, 42, an escaped convict who had been serving a sentence on a drug charge, said Deputy Fidel Gonzales. Ralston was killed.

Deputies discovered Ralston was not the man that they were seeking only after his body lay outside the house for several hours.

Later that night, McLarty called to report the second death. Authorities would not release any details about the victim, but McLarty’s estranged wife said he was an ex-convict the stuntman had befriended and allowed to stay with him. Recently, McLarty tried to evict him after he began acting “real strange,” Karen McLarty said.

She said the shooting “is quite a shock to the family.”

“I’ve known Gary since I was 15, and I know he does not have a violent bone in his body,” she said. McLarty and the dead man, she said, were introduced about three or four months ago by a mutual friend, who told McLarty that the man had just gotten out of prison and needed a break to get on his feet.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles police and sheriff’s deputies were trying to determine the connection between the sexual assault suspect, McLarty and Ralston. Boissier confirmed that the three men knew each other. Authorities also were trying to discover the cause of the fire that gutted McLarty’s house late Friday night.

The tangled story began about 7 a.m. Friday when deputies went to arrest the sexual assault suspect at the Little Tujunga Road home he shared with McLarty.

Warned that the man might be armed, a SWAT team accompanied deputies. The man later identified as Ralston ran out of the house as they approached and allegedly shot at deputies, who returned fire, said Gonzales.

Ralston’s body remained in front of the house until early afternoon because deputies believed a second armed man was in the house. It was not known whether Ralston died immediately or during the more than five hours it took to determine there was no second suspect in the house, authorities said.

Deputies fired several rounds of tear gas into the house, which could have caused the later fire, authorities said.

McLarty is being held on suspicion of murder without bail in the Foothill Division jail. The district attorney’s office will decide whether to file charges Monday, authorities said.

McLarty had been staying at the Little Tujunga Road house, which is owned by a friend. He offered to let the ex-convict stay with him because he “wanted to help him out,” Karen McLarty said.

“At first, they meshed, but then he saw that the guy was real strange,” she said. “He was prone to these violent outbursts, and he’d start screaming and throwing things. He would just explode out of nowhere.”

Intimidated by the man, who was nicknamed “The Bear” because of his large frame, McLarty decided to leave and stay with other friends, his wife said.

Less than a week ago, McLarty asked the man to move out. Soon after, the rape occurred inside the Little Tujunga Road house, she said. “The girl knew him by sight, and I heard he asked her to come over there to see something,” she said.

McLarty’s son, Cole, told a reporter that the rape suspect had been “out partying” when deputies arrived to arrest him.

He said his father told him the man drove to the Lake View Terrace ranch McLarty owns “looking for a confrontation.” As he ran toward McLarty and threatened to kill him, McLarty “shot at him five times, but the guy kept coming. The sixth shot in the head got him,” Cole McLarty said.

McLarty was a stunt double in “Twilight Zone,” in which Morrow and two child actors were killed.