Would-Be Victim of Robbery Pierced in Chest With Arrow : Crime: Immigrant says 2 men demanded money. When he said he had none, he was shot point-blank.

Seconds after a black Chevy Blazer pulled up to Rutillio Garcia Sandoval on a dark street early Monday, he was looking down the shaft of a powerful crossbow as two men demanded his money.

An instant later he was shot at point-blank range, the arrow--or “bolt” as it is sometimes called--piercing his lung and lodging near his heart.

“I saw the bow, but there was nothing I could do,” the 26-year-old immigrant from Mexico City said from his hospital bed at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo. “Then I was hit.”

Eleven hours after the seemingly senseless incident, Garcia remained hospitalized in stable condition and puzzled as to why he was attacked.

With a wound six to eight inches into his chest, he is lucky to be alive, said Dr. Stephen DeSantis, a trauma center surgeon who treated Garcia at the hospital.

“A couple of inches in either direction and it would have hit his heart, or maybe his aorta,” DeSantis said. “Either one . . . and he would have bled” to death.

The shooting took place just after midnight as Garcia and a friend, who was not identified, were walking by the small San Felipe De Jesus Catholic Church in the Doheny Village area of Capistrano Beach. Garcia, a dayworker, said he has lived in the United States a year and a half but has no local home or family and was on his way to another friend’s house to stay the night.

As the two men strolled near the church, the vehicle pulled alongside them. The two men inside--Garcia described one as being in his mid-20s and the other about 17--demanded money. He speculated he was shot because he told the would-be robbers he had no money.

As the Blazer sped away and his friend ran off to get help, Garcia sat down on the curb and slowly pulled the arrow out of his chest.

That’s where Mehrdad Marboot, a man who lives in the area, found him.

Marboot, 28, who lives in an apartment a block from the church, was watching television when he heard Garcia’s friend pounding on his door. He looked outside his upstairs window and saw Garcia across the street, sitting on the ground and crying in pain. He ran outside to help the man.

“He had a hole in his side and was bleeding but he appeared to be OK,” said Marboot, who called police. “They couldn’t speak much English and we couldn’t speak Spanish so at first we thought he had been stabbed. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Capt. Andy Romero of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department agreed.

“I don’t recall ever having heard of anything like this,” Romero said. “A crossbow is a very powerful weapon.”

DeSantis, with eight years of trauma surgery experience, said he is no longer shocked by such things. Luckily for Garcia, it was a “target-type arrow” without a dangerous head, he said.

“I’ve seen penetrating wounds from lots of things--arrows, fragments from explosions, bullets,” he said. “This patient was lucky the arrow did not have a blade head on it. If it would have had a blade, it would have gone deeper and done much more damage.”

Sheriff’s deputies recovered the arrow and are holding it as evidence, according to Lt. Robert Rivas, a department spokesman. At the moment, however, they have no suspects.

“I hope this is not the beginning of some crazy actions by a couple of kooks out there,” Rivas said.