Slain Businessman May Have Been Shot During an Ambush : Crime: His bullet-riddled car was found three blocks from his condo in Tarzana. Police say another possibility is that the victim was attacked by follow-home robbers.

A businessman returning to his Tarzana home in a new Mercedes-Benz was shot to death Monday, possibly by killers who were waiting for him or robbers who had followed him from a card club where he may have gone to play poker.

Los Angeles police said George Banafsheha, 33, attempted to speed away from his killers after being shot and may have been trying to reach a nearby hospital when he died of his wounds.

He was found in his bullet-riddled car shortly after 3 a.m., about three blocks from the gated condominium community on Burbank Boulevard where he lived. The car had crashed at high speed into a telephone pole, then careened through an iron fence and struck a pickup truck in a parking lot. The car came to rest about 100 yards from the Medical Center of Tarzana.

Police said they had few leads, though the number of shots--more than 10--fired at Banafsheha suggested more than one assailant. The victim’s watch had been taken and his pockets emptied.

Friends said Banafsheha was a partner in a family-operated clothing business who would often take as much as $1,200 with him when he played poker at card clubs in the Bell Gardens-Gardena area. But they said he would not have resisted robbers.

“There was no reason to shoot him,” said Ray Razaui, a friend of the victim since they were roommates at Cal State Northridge. “He would have given up the money. He would not have resisted. I never saw him get in a fight in his life.”

Investigators also puzzled over what happened. They said a follow-home robbery or an ambush were being treated as possibilities.

Swanston said Banafsheha visited a friend’s apartment in Hollywood late Sunday night and said he was going to the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens to play cards.

But investigators have not verified that he went. Security videotapes made at the club do not show Banafsheha, although they do not cover the entire playing area, and employees who know Banafsheha do not recall him being there, Swanston said.

George Hardie, general manager of the club, said Banafsheha was known to employees because he had been a regular but stopped coming a year ago. “He hasn’t been in here in a long time,” Hardie said.

Noting the number of shots fired by the assailants and the distance between Bell Gardens and Tarzana, Bell Gardens Police Lt. Don Barclift said a follow-home robbery seemed unlikely.

“It would be a little unusual to wait while he went that far,” Barclift said.