Driver Killed in Chatsworth Carjacking : Crime: Gunman drives off in Mercedes after the attack. In a separate incident, an off-duty police officer wounds an alleged auto thief in Beverly Hills.

A carjacker shot a 74-year-old man to death at a Chatsworth gas station Monday, apparently because the man resisted giving up his car, 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.

The Chatsworth killing was at least the second instance in five days in the San Fernando Valley of carjacking, an offense that has received such increasing attention that it was recently declared a federal crime.

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

He resisted and was shot in the head, officers said. Ghoraishy died as other patrons and passersby--led by the same emergency room nurse who treated Rodney G. King after he was beaten by Los Angeles police officers--tried to administer first aid. Meanwhile, the killer fled in Ghoraishy’s gold-colored, 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.

In the Beverly Hills incident, 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 officer, identified as Sgt. David Breedlove, 32, a 10-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran assigned to the Van Nuys station, was not working as a security guard for the jewelry store, Beverly Hills Police Sgt. Tom Van Ausdell said.

A spokesman for County-USC hospital said the suspected robber--identified by Beverly Hills police as David Campbell, 24, of Inglewood--was in serious condition. He was booked on charges of attempted murder and armed robbery in the jail ward.

The same parking lot 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. He was sentenced to death.

Although the Beverly Hills carjacking also involved a Mercedes-Benz and elderly victims, Los Angeles police said they did not believe it was connected to the earlier incident in Chatsworth.

“Nice cars and old people not paying attention--it’s pretty common” as a pattern for carjackings, said Detective Neal May. The Chatsworth killing appeared to be “a typical, random carjacking,” said Gallegos.

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 an auto in Canoga Park on Thursday and pushing the elderly driver into the street.

Despite publicity surrounding recent carjackings, it is difficult to tell whether they are on the rise in Los Angeles because such crimes are not reported separately, but as armed robberies, said a Police Department spokesman. Last year, such robberies dropped slightly from 75,136 in 1991 to 74,829, Cox said, 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 already has worked on 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.

He said the FBI plans to help Los Angeles police with the Chatsworth case but that no one had yet been assigned to the case.

The manager of the Mobil station at the intersection of Lassen Street and Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth, Jimmy Alfonso, said he was unaware of the robbery until a frantic customer came running into his booth shouting for him to call 911 for emergency help.

A witness, Arturo Arroyo, said he was just leaving a Del Taco restaurant across Lassen Street when he heard the “boom” of a gunshot. He and at least three other people--including an off-duty emergency room nurse--rushed to help Ghoraishy, to no avail, the 26-year-old Reseda resident 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 if confronted by 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.”

Many in the lunchtime crowd, drawn to the crime scene at the busy, suburban intersection, expressed disbelief that such a crime had occurred there in daylight. “In Chatsworth? In daytime?” said businessman Michael Cheng. “It’s incredible.”

Police said carjacking victims are more likely to survive if they comply with the carjacker’s demands, and several recent targets who lived to tell their stories said they did just that.

On Feb. 17, as Sandra Brookman, 48, arrived at the Burbank electronics firm where she is a supervisor, a man crouching nearby in the carport came running over with a gun and ordered her to start her car and put her purse on the passenger seat.

“I just wanted myself out of the situation, for him to take the car. I did as he told me to do,” Brookman said.

The assailant was arrested the next day. And even though she did not look directly at the man, 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 sedan from Alberto Gonzalez, 32, of Los Angeles, who was with his wife and three children when they were confronted by a gunman who held a pistol to his head. No suspects have been apprehended, Arnsbirger said.

Times staff writer Mathis Chazanov contributed to this story.