Armored Car Driver Wounded at an ATM : Crime: The Fullerton victim, an ex-Marine working solo in Garden Grove, is in critical condition at UCI Medical Center after being shot in the head. Two suspects are held.

An armored car driver who had just restocked an automated teller machine with cash was critically wounded Thursday by two gunmen who shot him point-blank in the head, then fled without taking any money, police said.

Police later arrested two Ontario men in the shooting. Thomas Anthony Chaney, 28, and Gilbert Orlandus Green, 22, were held on suspicion of armed robbery and attempted murder, apparently after several hours of interrogation, Garden Grove Police Sgt. Gary Walker said.

An Ontario woman, who authorities said was also detained for questioning, apparently was not arrested. The suspects were to be held in Orange County Jail, police said.

The victim, John G. Statkus, 24, of Fullerton, was listed in extremely critical condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange, hospital spokeswoman Elaine Beno said.

The two-year employee of Wells Fargo Armored Car Services was on his daily solo route, restocking and servicing teller machines, when he parked his van in front of a 7-Eleven store at the intersection of Chapman Avenue and Magnolia Street, Garden Grove Police Lt. John Woods said.

After working on the cash machine, Statkus opened the side door of his van. Two men suddenly appeared, Woods said, and “one of them shot him several times.”

Statkus was wounded twice in an arm, once in the head and once in the neck. He was protected by a bulletproof vest and armed with a revolver. Police have not determined whether he returned fire with his pistol, which was taken by one of the robbers, Woods said.

As Statkus fell into the passenger seat of the van, one robber climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition and backed the van out of the parking stall, Woods said.

But the van then stalled, he said, and the suspect panicked, jumped out and joined his partner, who drove away in another car.

The robbers fled in a 1986, black or dark-gray Volkswagen Rabbit GTI with the license plate number 2EIL306, Woods said. A Department of Motor Vehicles official said the car had been reported stolen Thursday.

The Volkswagen, which has not been found, led police to an Ontario home in the 1700 block of East G Street--and to the three people being questioned, Woods said. He declined to provide other details.

Meanwhile, Statkus underwent surgery at the hospital. Despite the severity of his wounds, Statkus’ wife, Carrie, is optimistic that he will recover.

“He looks so wonderful! He squeezed my hand,” she said, hugging other family members as she emerged into the hospital waiting room after a brief but emotional visit with her husband.

Friends who had gathered at the hospital described Statkus as an “All-American guy” and former Marine who is studying criminal law at Cal State Fullerton with hope of becoming a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

After his discharge from the Marine Corps in 1988, Statkus was hired by the armored car company. He was assigned to replenish and make minor repairs to stand-alone ATMs that are not tied to banks.

Using unmarked white vans, ATM servicemen load the machines with cash-filled black boxes that slip into the machines like cartridges, said Joe Allen, spokesman for New Jersey-based Baker Industries, the parent company for Wells Fargo Armored Car Services. (The company is not affiliated with Wells Fargo Bank.)

Unlike clearly marked armored trucks, some ATM armored vans have just one person assigned, Allen said. “The ATM service people are not handling the (same) high value of cargo,” Allen said, as do the teams in marked armored trucks.

Carrie Statkus, a receptionist, said her husband’s employer cut back on John’s work crew from three men to just him about two or three weeks ago.

“He was upset” with the cutbacks, she said.

“There’s no question in my mind that he would not have been shot had the company not made the cutbacks,” she said. “He may have been shot, but somebody would have been there to help him.”

Allen said he could neither confirm nor deny such a cutback. He speculated that Statkus may have been transfered from a more dangerous route--where two or three guards are used in one van--to a reputedly safer one.

Attacks on ATM servicemen and guards are rare, according to banking industry and government officials. Although the safety of consumers using automatic tellers has been a concern for years, the well-being of those who service the devices has not surfaced as an issue.

Baker Industries spokesman Allen said he recalls just one other such incident: an armed robbery in Florida two years ago.

Statkus’ family and friends said he knew the risks of his job but rarely, if ever, talked about them.

The attitude was, “it doesn’t happen to you,” Carrie Statkus said.

Another Wells Fargo employee who worked with Statkus and waited at the hospital added: “It’s a risk there. Everyone knew this was a possibility. You pretend every day it’s not going to happen to you. Today, it was John.”

Times staff writers Mark Landsbaum, Dave Willman and Henry Chu contributed to this report.