Woman Slain at Bus Stop : Violence: A man talking to his former girlfriend suddenly starts firing. He shoots himself after a short freeway chase. It’s Irvine’s first reported homicide since 1989.

A young man talking calmly to his ex-girlfriend at a bus stop Tuesday suddenly shot her, firing several more times as she lay fatally wounded, and then led police on a car chase before shooting himself in the head, police said.

Police and witnesses said the man and woman had been chatting unemotionally at the bus stop at Culver and Michelson drives about 3:10 p.m. Suddenly the man pulled a .25-caliber handgun from his pants and shot her once, causing her to stumble backward, and then continued to shoot as she lay on the grass near a gas station, witnesses at the glass-enclosed bus stop told police.

Police identified the gunman as Juan Garcia, 18, and the victim as Nora Maldonado, 20. The Santa Ana couple had been seeing each other for a year, police said, but Maldonado apparently broke off the relationship a few days ago. Garcia had wanted to get back together, said Lt. Mike White.

“I saw the guy point a gun at the girl,” said Dwayne Norsworthy, 25, a Unocal gas station attendant. “I heard blam, blam, blam, blam! I saw the girl lying there helpless. She was breathing short gasps of air.”

Norsworthy had run across Culver Drive to the woman after the gunman ran past him, got into a blue Camaro parked on Culver Drive and sped south.

About 10 minutes later, Irvine Officer Frank Johnson saw a blue Camaro on University Drive, police said. The driver led Johnson and a police helicopter on a brief chase east along University Drive to the northbound lanes of the San Diego Freeway.

With two police cars following, the driver went about two miles before suddenly pulling off the freeway and stopping near the Culver Drive off-ramp. As officers walked to the car, they saw the driver, alone in the car, slumped over in the driver’s seat. He was holding a handgun and bleeding from the head, said Sgt. Phil Povey.

Garcia was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where he was listed in extremely critical condition late Tuesday, police said. “It’s probably real touch-and-go,” Sgt. Gary Shull said.

Maldonado was pronounced dead at Irvine Medical Center shortly after the shooting. Her death marked the first reported homicide in Irvine since 1989, according to police and state statistics. Irvine is the only city in Orange County with a population over 100,000 to report no homicides for the past two years, state records show.

The slaying shook witnesses in the tree-lined intersection north of UC Irvine bounded by two gas stations, a shopping mall and two large apartment complexes.

Celia Banuelos said she was sitting in her car on Michelson Drive, ready to turn north on Culver Drive, when she saw the gunman firing into the woman. As he began driving off, Banuelos said, she cut over onto Culver Drive and followed his car for a short distance.

After a short distance, during which she memorized the first four digits of his license plate, “I thought maybe I shouldn’t be doing this because he had a gun,” she said.

Norsworthy and other witnesses said the woman was shot in the head and chest.

“She was laying there like a dish towel,” he said. “Her eyes were open. I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life.”