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3 Suspects Identified in Shooting of Officer : Crime: Man who led police on 50-mile chase is described as violent and troubled, with a criminal record dating back to age 14. All will be charged with attempted murder.

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TIMES STAFF WRITERS

The three captured suspects in Thursday’s shooting of a Pomona police officer were identified Friday and prosecutors said all three will be charged with attempted murder.

Police said Regino (Reggie) de Haro, 21, is the man who shot Officer Roger Mathews, 51, in the arm and leg during what apparently was a bungled robbery attempt at a home near the San Bernardino Freeway in Pomona.

Investigators said it was De Haro who commandeered a pickup truck at gunpoint in Ontario and led officers on a bullet-riddled, 50-mile chase across four counties that ended when he ran from the truck in his old neighborhood in Santa Ana and surrendered to police.

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The two other suspects were identified as Robert Lee Garcia, 25, of Ontario and Jesus Ochoa Garcia, 28, of Pomona. One was arrested a few blocks from the home where Mathews was shot and the other was taken into custody a few minutes later after attempting to escape in a stolen truck. Police did not say whether the Garcias are related.

Officers said the identification of the suspects was delayed because all three used numerous aliases.

Mathews was reported in fair condition Friday at Pomona Valley Hospital, where he was being treated for wounds suffered when a bullet pierced his right arm and grazed his left thigh.

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All three suspects were being held at the Pomona Jail. Prosectors said they will be arraigned Monday in Pomona Municipal Court.

“There’ll be a whole bag of charges filed against them,” said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Gibbons said that in addition to the attempted murder charges against all three stemming from the shooting of Mathews, the suspects will face charges connected with the robbery at the Pomona home.

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She said De Haro, who is accused of commandeering a truck belonging to Bob Moxley and forcing Moxley to drive during the hourlong chase that ensued, will face kidnaping charges in connection with Moxley’s abduction and additional attempted-murder charges for shooting at police during the chase.

“All three could receive life imprisonment,” Gibbons said.

Acquaintances and court records describe De Haro as a violent, troubled young man who spurned several efforts by Orange County probation officials to turn his life around.

At 14, he was convicted and sentenced to probation for assaulting a Santa Ana high school teacher. During the ensuing years, De Haro used 11 aliases while purportedly participating in burglaries, kidnaping, forgery, auto theft, assault with a firearm, assault to commit rape, attempted murder and using and dealing drugs, according to court records.

Before Thursday’s televised police chase, De Haro’s most recent serious brush with the law was in February, 1992, when Santa Ana police officers said they caught him as he attempted to burglarize a car about a mile from the spot where Thursday’s chase ended.

During the arrest 13 months ago, officers said they found De Haro carrying eight small bags of marijuana. A month later, he pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana for sale and was sentenced to nine months in jail and three years probation.

De Haro spent almost five months in jail. Three days after his release, he tested positive for morphine and marijuana during an appearance before his probation officer. Although the positive test was a violation of his probation, he was not jailed.

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Orange County probation officer Dennis LaCrosse wrote last September that De Haro’s “criminal conduct is escalating in seriousness and intensity, and for all of these reasons, he is considered to be an unsuitable candidate for continued probation supervision.”

During the final minutes of Thursday’s chase, the pickup truck commandeered by De Haro crisscrossed the streets of his old Santa Ana neighborhood. Police trapped the truck in a cul-de-sac at the end of Manitoba Drive, a few blocks from the gray stucco house where he had lived until seven years ago, when his family moved to another part of Santa Ana.

After running from the truck, exchanging gunfire with police and vaulting the fences of some former neighbors, De Haro dropped his gun in a back yard and surrendered.

As De Haro was led away by police on Thursday, a former neighbor recognized him.

“He looked at me and nodded like (he was saying) ‘Whazzup?’ ” said the neighbor, a 25-year-old Santa Ana man. “I was not surprised it was him.”

In Pomona on Friday, Carmen Marquez and her 14-year-old son, Orlando, pointed to the bullet holes where a robber shot Mathews and the room where they were confined at gunpoint.

What neither they nor police could explain is why their house, in a well-kept but modest neighborhood, was targeted for a daylight robbery.

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The three-bedroom residence behind a fence topped by statues of the Virgin Mary and two angels is not the home of rich people. It is the home of a family that runs a small Mexican restaurant in Pomona.

Carmen Marquez, 38, said she was getting ready to go to work at the restaurant Thursday morning when three men barged into the house, flashing guns. She said they ordered her, her daughter and a 4-year-old niece into a bedroom where Orlando was sleeping.

The mother said the men demanded money, jewelry and drugs.

Times staff writers Mike Ward in Pomona, Lee Romney in Ontario, and David Avila and Mark I. Pinsky in Orange County contributed to this story.

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