Ex-Lover Held in Killing After Alleged Kidnaping : Violence: Former boyfriend may be charged with murder of Canoga Park woman after she is accidentally shot by her husband, who tried to stop the incident.

A 52-year-old woman was accidentally shot and killed by her husband in front of the couple’s Canoga Park home as he tried to stop his wife’s ex-lover from kidnaping her, police said Sunday.

The former lover, Joe A. Yohn, 27, of Rosamond was arrested shortly after the shooting on suspicion of murdering Linda Corum, the woman he tried to abduct, police said. Under state law, Yohn can be charged with her death because it occurred during the alleged kidnaping.

Corum’s husband, Larry Corum, 53, was questioned but not held in the shooting.

Linda Corum died shortly after the 10:15 p.m. shooting Saturday. The Corums’ three children saw the incident from the sidewalk in front of the family’s home.

“This is really a weird one,” Sgt. Roger Ferguson said as he recounted the events that led to the shooting on a quiet residential street.

According to police and neighbors, Linda Corum recently moved back in with her husband after an affair with Yohn, an unemployed laborer. Upset that she had broken up with him, Yohn began harassing the Corums, and vandalized their house, car and truck, police said.

In the weeks since Linda Corum broke off the affair, neighbors said she and her husband feared retribution and took a weeklong trip to Utah to get away. They had returned only hours before the shooting.

One neighbor said Corum had armed himself with the handgun after he saw Yohn drive past the house several times earlier in the evening.

About 10 p.m. Saturday, Yohn stopped his car outside the Corums’ stucco house and demanded some paperwork he claimed Linda Corum had. As she approached the open driver’s side door, Yohn pulled her in, witnesses said.

“She went in kicking and screaming,” said a neighbor who saw the incident. “He pulled her right over his lap. I don’t even know if her feet were in the car.”

As Yohn drove away, Larry Corum pulled out his handgun and fired a warning shot in the air, police said. Yohn did not stop, so Corum fired another shot at the back of the car--a shot that police said hit his wife in the chest.

Realizing that Linda Corum had been shot, Yohn pushed her out of the car as it rounded a corner, witnesses said. She died a short time later.

Yohn, whom police found at his parents’ home, was being held Sunday without bail.

Neighbors described the Corums as a quiet couple who had lived in the house for more than 15 years. They said Larry Corum told them his wife had been found to be suffering bouts of depression, and had moved in and out of the house occasionally in recent years. Larry Corum was described as a devoted husband who always welcomed his wife back.

“He was heartbroken” after their latest breakup, said one neighbor.

“I don’t know a person in this world who wouldn’t have done the same thing to save his wife from a guy like that,” another neighbor said of the shooting.