A New Life in U.S. Ends in Gunfire Before It Begins : Immigrants: A young woman from Mexico is slain in the home where she had just started work as a maid.

Maria Figueroa lived in Los Angeles for little more than a month, barely enough time to begin chasing her dreams. Early this week, the Mexican native died an immigrant’s nightmare, shot in the back by an armed burglar.

Just two days after she started working as a maid at the home of an affluent Hancock Park family, the 20-year-old woman from Guadalajara was surprised in her sleeping quarters Tuesday morning by an armed burglar. She tried to flee, but the gunman fired at least three shots at Figueroa, wounding her fatally, police said.

On Tuesday night, police patrolling the neighborhood chased and captured an 18-year-old youth allegedly casing another of the sprawling homes set back from the neighborhood’s tree-lined streets.

Police anticipate that the suspect--whom they declined to identify--will be booked on suspicion of Figueroa’s murder, Wilshire Division Detective Dan Andrews said Wednesday.

Only the Mexican maid who worked next door to the house in the 500 block of South Van Ness Avenue, where Figueroa died, knew the victim well enough to talk about her. But the maid--who did not want to give her name--said she had only talked twice with the young woman with long dark hair. Each time, she said, the two reminisced about the good life they missed back home.

“It is very terrible,” the maid said, describing Figueroa as a quiet woman who spoke only Spanish and came from a family of 13 in Guadalajara.

Figueroa had no relatives in Los Angeles, Andrews said, adding that coroner’s officials would make arrangements with her family to send her body back home.

The two-story wood-frame house where the killing occurred was shuttered tight Wednesday. Only two pairs of adult’s running shoes and two tinier pairs of children’s sneakers left on the porch gave a hint about the owners--identified as Si Oh Rhew, his wife and two preschool-age children.

Neighbors and police said Figueroa and the Rhews were in the house about 1:10 a.m. Tuesday when the burglar broke in through a back window, gathering up stereo equipment and other items from downstairs rooms.

According to Andrews, the intruder went upstairs and entered the bedroom where Figueroa was sleeping. Awakened, the young woman tried to flee, but the burglar brought her down with several shots from a small-caliber pistol, then escaped.

The Rhew family called police, Andrews said, “after they heard the struggle.”

Figueroa died at County-USC Medical Center about 3 a.m.

About 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, Wilshire Division officers who were patrolling in the neighborhood saw a young man enter the back yard of a home across the street from the murder scene.

The man ran when officers approached, eluding them briefly. Police with search dogs flooded the area and, minutes later, arrested a man they found hiding in an old incinerator in another yard, Andrews said.

“We’re holding him on suspicion of murder,” Andrews said. “I’d anticipate a booking for murder.”

Several neighbors complained that burglaries are common in the neighborhood. One woman said she had been hit several times, losing stereo equipment and other valuables. Once, she even confronted an intruder who took one look at her and ran.

“With a murder like this, you would have thought there would be some news about it,” the woman said. “But I haven’t seen any. And I guess that tells you how blase we’ve got about murder in this town.”