Garden Grove Patrol Officer Slain : Police: Nine-year veteran Howard Dallies Jr. is fatally wounded despite bulletproof vest. Killer eludes a massive manhunt.

A veteran police officer was shot and killed on a quiet residential street early Tuesday, gunned down by a motorcyclist at close range and so suddenly that the patrolman never had a chance to pull his weapon, authorities said.

Howard E. Dallies Jr., 36, a nine-year member of the city’s police force, became the first Orange County officer in three years to die in the line of duty, killed by a bullet that tore into his stomach, just below the bulletproof vest the department requires officers to wear.

Dallies died about 6 a.m. at UCI Medical Center in Orange, after a team of 10 surgeons tried to save him, authorities said.

Police immediately launched a search for Dallies’ attacker and the motorcycle, described as a recently stolen gray Kawasaki.

On Tuesday afternoon officers impounded a motorcycle matching that description that was found less than a mile from the scene of the shooting, but had not made any arrests or released the name of a suspect. Police said forensics experts were examining the motorcycle to determine if it was linked to the shooting.

A later search of the area where the motorcycle was discovered was fruitless, said Capt. David Abrecht. Police from neighboring cities joined in the hunt throughout the day.

The 2:45 a.m. shooting in the 10100 block of Aldgate Avenue, a middle-class neighborhood of single-family homes, sent terrified residents into the street.

“I heard, ‘Pop pop pop, pop pop pop,’ and my first thought was, ‘Who did I’ ” make angry? “It was that close,” said Charles North, 29, a political consultant who was reading in bed when six or seven shots rang out. One man phoned 911. Another reached Dallies as he lay mortally wounded and called police on the radio in the officer’s cruiser.

The Garden Grove slaying came 15 days after two Compton police officers where shot execution-style during a traffic stop at an intersection in that city. Police said they did not think the two shootings were connected.

In the Garden Grove shooting, just as in Compton a few weeks before, the officer did not radio his location during the encounter with the motorcyclist or call in a description of the vehicle being pulled over, contrary to the Police Department’s policy.

“There are 101 reasons why an officer doesn’t call it in,” said Capt. David Abrecht of the Garden Grove Police Department. “My knowledge of Howard is that he’s not a careless officer. He’s a very solid, veteran officer that people actually look up to as a role model.”

The fact that Dallies did not call in beforehand “gives rise to questions about whether he knew the subject,” said Sgt. George Jaramillo. “For whatever reason, Howard Dallies felt sufficiently confident to not call it in.”

Unlike some of the department’s cruisers, Dallies’ vehicle was not equipped with an automatic video camera, which could have provided investigators with more clues about the killing.

“Our officers are professionals and they are not mandated to (call in before the stop). We encourage it in light of what happened in Compton,” Jaramillo said.

The last time Dallies communicated with police dispatchers was about 30 minutes before the shooting, Jaramillo said. Dallies pulled over a vehicle at Euclid Street and Chapman Avenue in an incident that investigators did not believe was connected to the shooting.

Jaramillo said that Dallies drove his marked police unit onto Aldgate Avenue off Brookhurst Street about 2:45 a.m. “on a car stop or contact of some sort” with a male motorcyclist, Jaramillo said. It was unclear late Tuesday whether Dallies pulled the motorcycle over or whether he encountered it on the street, police said.

Shortly afterward, at least six gunshots awoke nearby residents, prompting some to call 911. Others rushed out into the street as a motorcycle sped away.

They found Dallies laying in a pool of blood a few feet from his police cruiser, his handgun in his holster. One resident, Jessie Brown, grabbed the police radio in Dallies’ car and called for help.

Brown said he found a pulse in Dallies’ wrist. “The police were very fast arriving, maybe two minutes. Then we moved back and they started to help him.”

Dallies, a couple of hours into his late-night shift, was working alone. Jaramillo said that since the department’s inception in 1956, patrol cars with single officers have been standard for all of the department’s shifts.

The assailant shot several times at Dallies, grazing his face with one bullet, striking him once in the bulletproof vest he wore and firing the fatal shot into his stomach.

Some officers had tears in their eyes as they tended to their wounded colleague, who was breathing erratically, witnesses said. Empty bullet shells littered the ground nearby.

As officers transported him to the hospital, Dallies, still conscious, gave a description of the motorcycle and its driver to officers, Jaramillo said.

Dr. Kenneth Waxman, director of trauma service at the medical center, led the team of 10 doctors and 12 nurses who battled for two hours in a futile attempt to save Dallies’ life.

“He was unconscious when he was brought in, and he never regained consciousness,” said Waxman.

“He was bleeding into his abdomen and chest. He was very critically injured and in profound shock. . . . Every effort was made to stop the bleeding and resuscitate the patient, but his wounds and shock were too severe, and the efforts were unsuccessful.”

Several hours later, officers discovered a gray Kawasaki motorcycle parked in front of a house in the 11400 block of Caroleen Lane, a quiet cul-de-sac off Orangewood Avenue, about a quarter-mile from the site of the shooting, Jaramillo said.

More than a dozen armed Garden Grove officers, about half of them in uniform, fanned out in the cul-de-sac at 1:30 p.m. as a bloodhound team from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department searched the area.

Investigators said they do not know why Dallies was shot. “As far as the whys and the wheres, we’re still working on that,” Jaramillo said.

Dallies, who lived with his family in Garden Grove, is survived by his wife, Mary, an Irvine police dispatcher, and two boys, ages 4 and 7.

Dallies graduated from the Orange County Sheriff’s Academy in 1978 and then went to work as a deputy assigned to the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, officials said. In 1979, Dallies transferred to Placentia, where he was a patrol officer and later worked for a special enforcement detail that focused on vice and narcotics investigations. In 1984, Dallies joined the Garden Grove Police Department, working mostly as a patrol officer. He also held other assignments, such as vice and narcotics investigator and as a training officer. Dallies was working toward a promotion to sergeant, police said.

Chester Weaver, Dallies’ 33-year-old cousin, said: “It doesn’t make sense. He didn’t have the ‘I’m a cop’ attitude. He was a real nice guy. He wasn’t just a cop that got shot, he was my cousin. God, I hope they catch this guy who did this. It’s crazy.”

Mayor Frank Kessler, who was Garden Grove’s police chief when Dallies was hired, said: “You couldn’t find a better officer, or a more sincere, honest and compassionate man. It is a very sad day for all of us in Garden Grove,” said

Lt. William Dalton said Dallies “was an excellent officer and he was a very warm human being. There’s not that much I can say. That pretty much covers it all. He was a hell of a cop.”

After the slaying, the Garden Grove Police Officers Assn. established two funds, one to offer a reward for information on the case and another to help Dallies’ family, Jaramillo said. Pledges toward the reward fund total $10,000.

A funeral and memorial service for Dallies were being planned, Jaramillo said.

Garden Grove police draped their badges in black and flags at the Civic Center were flown at half staff. At their weekly meeting, county supervisors said they were shocked by the shooting and ordered the county’s flags flown at half staff in Dallies’ honor.

Dallies became the fifth Garden Grove officer to die while on duty in a little more than three decades. The last Orange County police officer to be killed in the line of duty was Fullerton undercover narcotics officer Tommy De La Rosa, who was shot when a drug sting went awry in June, 1990.

Nationwide, an average of almost 170 officers are killed each year while on duty, said Craig W. Floyd of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks such slayings using federal and state data.

Floyd said officers today are better trained and have better equipment than their counterparts just 10 years ago, helping to promote a decrease in the number of slain officers. In 1972 one of every 1,716 officers died in the line of duty. In 1992, that ratio had declined to one officer killed for every 3,938 serving, he said.

Officers began their shifts at the Garden Grove police station early Tuesday exchanging news about Dallies’ injuries and clinging to hope that he would survive.

“I’m kind of still in shock,” said Lt. John Woods, who said he had known Dallies for several years. Woods said a psychologist spoke with all the officers who responded to the call on Aldgate Avenue.

“Things that happen like this may not affect them today, but may affect them a few days from now or even later,” Woods said.

“When we first came in this morning, we knew that Howard had been seriously wounded but he might survive. Then all of the sudden, around 6 a.m., the word came down that he had passed away,” Abrecht said.

Times staff writers Matt Lait, Rene Lynch, Kevin Johnson, David A. Avila, Eric Lichtblau, Jodi Wilgoren, Bill Billiter and correspondent Robert Barker contributed to this report.

* MORE COVERAGE: Bulletproof vests save many lives, but wearers still vulnerable. . . . Surgeons worked feverishly but in vain. . . . O.C. officers killed on duty. A16