Man Fatally Shot in Chatsworth Carjacking : Crime: Gunman drives off in Mercedes after attack at gas station. In separate incident, an off-duty police officer wounds an auto theft suspect in Beverly Hills.

A carjacker shot a 74-year-old man to death at a Chatsworth gas station Monday and drove off in his Mercedes while shocked bystanders tried in vain to revive the dying man, Los Angeles police said.

And in a separate incident, an off-duty Los Angeles police officer shot and wounded an alleged carjacker in Beverly Hills.

In Chatsworth, the assailant shot the man after he resisted giving up his car, police said. It was at least the second instance of carjacking--recently classified as a federal crime--in five days in the San Fernando Valley.

The victim, identified as Naghi Ghoraishy, a Chatsworth retiree, had just paid for gas shortly after 11 a.m. at a Mobil station when he was approached by a young man with a handgun and ordered to get out of his car, police and witnesses said.

Ghoraishy, who was shot in the head, died as other patrons tried to administer first aid and the killer fled in Ghoraishy’s gold 1989 Mercedes-Benz sedan, said Los Angeles Police Detective Salvador Gallegos.

Broadcast news reports describing the victim and his car drew Ghoraishy’s son and daughter-in-law to the gas station while his body still lay by the pumps, police and the gas station manager said. The family declined to talk to reporters.

The fight to keep Ghoraishy alive was led, coincidentally, by the same emergency room nurse who treated Rodney G. King after he was beaten two years ago. Although she has been subpoenaed 15 times since then, and has been hospitalized twice for the stress of her legal involvement in the King case, nurse Carol Denise Edwards nevertheless swerved her car out of passing traffic in response to screams from the witnesses for help.

Although by doing so she enmeshed herself in another high-profile crime and its probable legal aftermath, Edwards said she had no choice. “It’s a very frightening thing to see what’s happening,” said Edwards, who had just completed a 12-hour shift at Pacifica Hospital of the Valley.

In Beverly Hills, two elderly women had just parked their car in a lot near the Van Cleef & Arpels store on Rodeo Drive when a man approached them, Beverly Hills Police Sgt. Richard Westfall said.

“The suspect produced a handgun, the officer observed the crime, the officer shot the suspect and the crime ended,” Westfall said.

The Los Angeles Police Department officer was identified by Beverly Hills police as Sgt. David Breedlove, 32.

A spokesman for County-USC Medical Center said the suspect--identified by Beverly Hills police as David Campbell, 24, of Inglewood--was in serious condition in the jail ward, held on charges of attempted murder and armed robbery.

Van Cleef & Arpels was the scene of a daylong drama on June 23, 1986, when a robber killed a store clerk and a security guard and held off police for hours. Steven Livaditis was arrested after a sheriff’s sniper killed the store manager as the robber tried to leave the building with three hostages under cover of darkness. Livaditis was sentenced to death.

The Chatsworth killing appeared to be “a typical, random carjacking,” Gallegos said.

It took place on the same day that the district attorney’s office filed robbery and assault charges against a 14-year-old boy accused of carjacking in Canoga Park on Friday and pushing the elderly driver into the street.

It is difficult to tell whether carjackings are on the rise in Los Angeles, police said, because such crimes are not reported separately but as armed robberies. Last year, armed robberies dropped slightly from 75,136 in 1991 to 74,829, said LAPD Officer Don Cox, estimating that carjackings make up 6% to 9% of that total.

Nationally, however, vehicle theft has consistently risen over the past seven years, jumping 61% from 1984 to 1991, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, a bureau spokesman said. Of particular note, said FBI spokesman Steven Wayne Berry, is a rise in violent carjacking attempts.

The FBI has handled two carjacking cases in the Los Angeles area since the federal statute went into effect in October, and both were handled by agents of the bureau’s anti-gang unit because the suspects were believed to be gang members, Berry said.

The FBI plans to help Los Angeles police with the Chatsworth case, he said.

Veteran robbery Detective Wayne Newton of the Devonshire Division said he could recall at least one other fatal carjacking that occurred in the northwestern San Fernando Valley several years ago. He advised putting up no struggle when threatened with a gun.

“You can replace your car, you can replace your jewelry,” said Newton, “but if they shoot and kill you, you’re out of luck.”

On Feb. 17, Sandra Brookman, 48, was attacked at 5:45 a.m. as she arrived at the Burbank electronics firm where she is a supervisor. When she opened her car door, a man crouching in the carport approached with a gun, and ordered her to start her car and put her purse on the passenger seat.

“Two things were going through my mind; don’t take me with you, and don’t shoot me,” Brookman said. “I did as he told me to do.”

The assailant was arrested the next day. Even though she did not look directly at her assailant, Brookman saw enough to testify against him during a preliminary hearing.

“She did everything he asked, and she remained calm--that’s the main thing,” said Detective Brian Arnsbirger of the Burbank Police Department’s robbery-homicide unit.

Arnsbirger said there has been at least one other Burbank-area carjacking recently: the Feb. 1 theft of a 32-year-old man’s sedan.

The man, his wife and three children were in the 700 block of South Lake Street at about 9:45 p.m. when they were confronted by a gunman who held a pistol to his head. The man gave the robber his keys and the gunman drove away, police said. The gunman has not been apprehended.

Times staff writer Mathis Chazanov contributed to this story.