2 Left Dead by Youths’ Evening of Crime

It started as a joy ride for five youths bent on having fun and making some fast money on a Saturday night.

When it ended early Sunday, two people were dead at a Santa Monica 7-Eleven after a bungled robbery attempt. Two others were wounded.

Police said Monday that the convenience store was at least the sixth stop in a three-hour string of crimes that started in the South Bay. Along the way, police said, the youths hit a hotel, a record store, a restaurant, a sandwich shop and a liquor store, grabbing food, drink, compact discs and money.

At the 7-Eleven, just after midnight, at least one gun-toting male suspect shot and killed clerk Anthony Ongamsing, 35, as he hid in the back of the store while speaking on the phone with police, authorities said. Suspects shot another clerk in the back, without provocation, police said.

One of the suspects, 16-year-old Anthony James Carver of South Los Angeles, was killed by police as he left the store, holding cash in one hand and a gun in the other, authorities said. Another juvenile suspect was shot and wounded.

Police said the two surviving male suspects will be charged with robbery and murder, as will two female companions who were waiting for them in the car. All are scheduled for arraignment today.

Police said they have concluded that the series of crimes was a joy ride, pure and simple.

“For some of these kids, it’s something to do on a Saturday night,” said Sgt. Bill Brucker of the Santa Monica Police Department. “Murder? They don’t get concerned about it.”

Police are seeing cases with disturbing frequency in which a group of teen-agers make a night of robbing stores for cash and goods, “hitting everything in sight,” Brucker said.

“They go on a rampage,” added Homicide Detective Steve Rosenfeld. “They say, ‘Hey, we’ve got guns. No one will mess with us.’ ”

In this case, according to Brucker, the two young women went along as drivers and lookouts, while their male counterparts held up the stores.

Rosenfeld said the suspects were “arrogant” and clowning around during the robberies, even posing as employees at a Subway shop in Venice, giving out free sandwiches.

Police said the rampage started about 9:30 p.m. Saturday with a robbery at the Best Western South Bay Hotel at 15000 Hawthorne Blvd. in Lawndale.

Two male suspects robbed a hotel employee at gunpoint, forcing him to give them more than $860, while a female suspect watched and waited outside, said Manager Alan Chi, who was at the hotel but did not see the holdup.

“We had a TV camera over the front desk, pointing at them,” Chi said. “But I don’t think they cared. They just wanted the money.”

The group then held up a Sam Goody music store at 16129 Hawthorne Blvd. in Lawndale, stealing as much as $3,000 worth of compact discs and CD players. Soon after, they robbed a Culver City Sizzler restaurant of money and food, police said.

Next, police said, they robbed the Subway shop of cash and sandwiches before “driving right down the street” to the Trading Post liquor store at 1313 Main St. in Venice about 11:15 p.m. At the liquor store, Brucker said, the bandits stole cash and robbed a security guard of his gun, before heading on to the fatal encounter at the 7-Eleven store at Santa Monica Boulevard and 16th Street.

Police have identified two of the suspects as Ray John Dailey, 20, and Katrina Camille Humphries, 18, both of South Los Angeles. The identities of the two juvenile suspects were withheld.