Torrance Officer Arrested : Crime: The six-year police veteran was freed on bail after being held for allegedly trying to kidnap a woman in Lancaster.

A Torrance police officer was arrested on suspicion of attempted kidnaping after he was accused of assaulting a woman on a Lancaster street and chasing her to a nearby auto body shop, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Saturday.

Roland Sabara, 35, a Lancaster resident and six-year veteran of the Torrance Police Department, was free on $30,000 bail Saturday after his arrest Friday night on suspicion of attempted kidnaping and drunk driving, said Deputy Rich Erickson.

Sabara grabbed the woman about 2:30 p.m. Friday as she was entering her car in the 200 block of West Avenue I near Spearmint Street, Erickson said. But the woman, whose name was withheld, struggled free, shut her car door and drove to a nearby auto repair shop, where witnesses called police, Erickson said.

Deputies arrested Sabara, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, about four hours later near his home in the 43000 block of Dana Drive, Erickson said.

The woman said she did not know Sabara and it was unclear what prompted the incident, Erickson said. Witnesses said Sabara had earlier harassed several other women in the same area that afternoon, including four girls from nearby Antelope Valley High School.

This is not Sabara’s first brush with the law. After slamming his truck into a Redondo Beach home in August, 1990, Sabara pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of hit-and-run driving and was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a $612 fine.

Sabara, assigned to patrol duty on the graveyard shift, was suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation, said Torrance Police Lt. Harold Maestri.

“He’s been relieved of duty with pay pending a formal investigation,” Maestri said. “He has no police power but he is still on the payroll temporarily.”

If convicted of the felony kidnaping charge, Maestri said, Sabara will be fired.

“We are assuming he is innocent until proven guilty--just like anyone else,” Maestri said. “We have seen nothing in terms of paperwork about this incident.”

Maestri would not comment on the Redondo Beach accident in which Sabara drove his 1989 Chevy Blazer through a fence and into the side of a house on Diamond Street.

Before Friday’s incident outside Bob Howle Automotive Repair shop, witnesses said Sabara had been driving around the industrial area of downtown Lancaster harassing women from his car.

The victim of the alleged kidnaping attempt was a friend of one of the auto shop employees.

“She just finished lunch with my secretary and walked over to her car when he grabbed her as she was getting in,” Howle said Saturday.

The woman drove into the shop’s parking lot and ran into the office, screaming and crying, Howle said. Sabara drove after her but did not leave his car, Howle said.

“He tried to back out into the street but couldn’t because of traffic so we stopped about 10 feet away and got a good look at him. We didn’t try to stop him. We thought he might have a gun.”

Sabara then circled the area for about 30 or 40 minutes until sheriff’s deputies arrived, Howle said.

“He kept driving by here real slowly, up and down the alley,” Howle said. “He looked drunk or high on something--definitely not normal.”