Love Triangle Disputed as Slaying Cause : Crime: The girlfriend of the victim in the Dana Point Marina shooting said they were friends of the suspect and his wife.

A love triangle was not the cause of the weekend shooting death of Randy Lee Devore at Dana Point Harbor, his longtime girlfriend said Monday.

Pamela Smith of Irvine, who had shared a home and boat with Devore for eight years, said Robert McCloud Sherwood and his wife, Marny, were good friends of theirs and that they often had sailed together.

Devore was just “in the wrong place at the wrong time” when he was shot Friday, allegedly by Sherwood, a man who had caused a scene at the Dana Point Yacht Club several times, Smith said.

“Apparently (Robert Sherwood) thought there was something going on, but there wasn’t,” said a distraught Smith, 47, a government accounting technician. “We were all friends. We had been on their boat together 100 times.”

Sherwood, 41, of Dana Point, a business executive, was booked on suspicion of murder. He is expected to be arraigned today.

According to police reports and witness accounts, Devore and Marny Sherwood were aboard her 27-foot Catalina sailboat, Mariah, at about 10 p.m. when Robert Sherwood arrived. Witnesses saw Marny Sherwood leave the area and then they heard shots.

Devore, 41, died at 11:18 p.m. near a gangplank to Dock E in the Dana Point Marina, authorities said. Marny Sherwood called 911.

A team of Sheriff’s Department divers searched underwater Friday night and Saturday for the gun used in the shooting. A department spokesman said Monday evening that he did not know whether the weapon had been found.

Smith and other Dana Point Yacht Club members said Robert Sherwood was only an occasional visitor to the club, where his wife had a membership for herself only. But he had apparently showed up unannounced at the club several times and made a scene, angry at Marny for one reason or another, Smith said.

“He seemed to be having a problem with all of her friends, male and female, from what I could see,” Smith said. “Evidently, he didn’t want her to sail.”

Smith said the day had started typically for her and Devore. They had lunch at Coco’s restaurant in Irvine, chatted about their 36-foot sailboat and, before parting, decided to get together again the next night.

Instead, she got a phone call with the news of Devore’s death.

“I didn’t know anything until a friend called me,” Smith said. “I was expecting a call from Randy.”

Smith said she and Devore had just built their own sailboat.

“I usually joined Randy on Friday nights, and we stayed the weekend on the boat,” she said. “But I had a run on Saturday, so Randy was going to call me and tell me how his own race had gone.”

Smith said Devore, an avid sailor and experienced sailboat racer and crew member, left their lunch Friday and headed for the harbor to meet with Marny Sherwood, a newcomer to racing with whom he had raced several times. They were scheduled to race together again Saturday in a special “double-hander” race for crews of two, one man and one woman, said John White, a yacht club member.

White, 53, a Cal State Fullerton professor, said Devore “used to race with me, but since I got an injury and hadn’t raced much, he began to race with Marny. She has a boat just like mine, and Randy helped her rig it for racing and helped her crew.”

Devore, a California native who grew up in Downey and graduated from Laguna Beach High School, was a handyman, tile setter and carpenter, as well as being a yachtsman, said several of his friends. Last week, he helped Glen Hellings, a San Juan Capistrano insurance broker, deliver his sailboat from Dana Point to Long Beach.

“Without a doubt, he was one of the best sailors in the harbor,” Hellings said. “He did a lot of single-handed sailing. He is a loved member of the sailing community, and we all miss him terribly.”

For the past two years, Marny Sherwood has been secretary to San Juan Capistrano City Manager Stephen B. Julian.