2 Men Killed in Carjackings 2 Miles Apart

A bartender who aspired to a show-business career and a highway worker who served as a Little League coach were killed within two miles of each other Wednesday morning, both the apparent victims of unrelated carjackings, police said.

William Edward Fliehmann, who was working for Caltrans, was killed when police believe he was thrown from his truck at the Victory Boulevard entrance ramp to the Hollywood Freeway, where his body was found by co-workers, Los Angeles Police Detective Mike Coffey said.

A south Los Angeles man, described as a “prime suspect,” was later taken into custody in the case, police said.

Nearby, Thomas Martin MacDowell was parking his BMW 325 in the 12100 block of Hesby Street when he was approached by a gunman who fired one or two shots into his upper torso, police said.

After being shot, the 32-year-old Chatsworth man apparently drove his car about 100 feet across Hesby Street and crashed into shrubs behind his girlfriend’s apartment building, Coffey said. Police officers found MacDowell dead inside his car, which was still running with the radio and lights on.

Coffey said it was very likely that MacDowell’s assailant “probably panicked and then left.” Witnesses told police that after hearing gunfire, they saw a man run from the scene and enter a light-colored car that sped away.

Coffey said it was unknown whether the gunman had been waiting for MacDowell before the shooting on Hesby Street, just off Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

“It could have been an attempt carjacking,” Police Lt. Ron LaRue said. “The car was locked and the window was down about four inches, which gives the appearance that when the suspects approached him they shot him through the open window and then he tried to drive off.”

Friends and family described MacDowell as an aspiring screenwriter, director and comedian, who worked as a bartender at the L. A Cabaret in Encino. He occasionally performed stand-up comedy in clubs throughout Los Angeles.

“He was a real friendly guy,” said MacDowell’s mother, Alice MacDowell of Luning, Nev. “He always wanted to make people laugh and have fun. I can’t imagine that he had any enemies.” She said her son had moved from Luning to Los Angeles about eight years ago.

His girlfriend, Adrena Jensen, said that MacDowell had gone out about 11 p.m. to visit a friend at a bar and get a bite to eat, and that he had planned to return to her apartment about 3 a.m.

“We were just talking last week about leaving L. A. because the crime here is so bad,” Jensen said.

Fliehmann, a 41-year-old Whittier resident and Little League baseball coach, had finished a coffee break with some co-workers when he headed to Victory Boulevard near the Hollywood Freeway to put out cones before closing a portion of the street for an improvement project.

But when Fliehmann’s co-workers arrived about 15 minutes later, they found him dead on the entrance ramp, Coffey said. A 1989 Ford one-ton truck carrying as many 400 red cones was also missing.

“They found the cones had not been layed out and the truck was gone,” Coffey said. “They could see his body on the southbound on-ramp.”

Fliehmann was an employee of Starlight Safety Supply Co., a private construction firm based in La Mirada that contracts employees to Caltrans. Detectives were unsure Wednesday morning whether Fliehmann was in the truck when he was approached by assailants or whether he had jumped onto the vehicle when he realized somebody was trying to take it.

The vehicle was driven about 300 feet up the entrance ramp leading to the freeway, Coffey said. Fliehmann apparently fell off the truck and died at the scene.

“He may have jumped onto the truck,” Coffey said. “And when it sped up the on-ramp he may have fallen off the truck and hit his head on the curb.”

Coffey said it was also possible that Fliehmann was shoved out of the moving vehicle by his assailants. He suffered “severe blunt-force trauma” to his head, police said.

The stolen truck was recovered from a parking lot about 3 p.m. in the 800 block of Virgil Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, LaRue said. A photograph of a truck similar to the one taken in the incident was shown on a television news report that was seen by a viewer who contacted police.

Detectives interviewed the man who sighted the truck and he described seeing a large man leave it there and walk away, police said. About 5 p.m., two Rampart Division officers saw a man fitting the description given by the caller, said Officer Sharyn Michelson, a police spokeswoman.

The officers arrested Leshawn Cummings, 29, who stands 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighs about 260 pounds, as he sat at a bus bench at Santa Monica Boulevard and Virgil Avenue. Detective Mike Coffey said Cummings was a “prime suspect” in the slaying of Fliehmann.

Caltrans spokeswoman Margie Tiritilli said Fliehmann was going to close the lane to prepare for a delivery of steel column casings that would be used for the seismic reinforcement of the exit and entrance ramps leading to and from the Hollywood Freeway.

“We are outraged and saddened that this happened,” Tiritilli said. “We’ve always had to worry about erratic drivers and drivers under the influence and now there’s the question of what has happened here.”

Tiritilli said Wednesday’s incident marked the first time that she could recall that a highway worker had fallen victim to a car or truckjacking.

“A truckjacking is something that we haven’t experienced before and we will certainly be evaluating this situation,” she said.

In the wake of Fliehmann’s death, Tiritilli said the department would evaluate its safety policies for employees and subcontractors.

“Highway workers have a very difficult job,” Tiritilli said. “We schedule as much work as we can in the evening and late at night so that we’ll have the least amount of impact on motorists during the day.”

No weapons were recovered at either of the crime scenes and police Wednesday were seeking witnesses to both slayings, though some residents told police that they heard shots fired just before the MacDowell killing.

“I heard car tires screeching and then it sounded like it hit something,” said Kelly Stenson, who lives in the same apartment as MacDowell’s girlfriend. “After that I heard at least two gunshots.”

“I didn’t really think anything of it because we hear gunshots a lot and it sounded like it was off in the distance,” she said.

But about 30 minutes later, Stenson said she and her boyfriend, Glen Cruciani, who manages the apartment complex in the 5000 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, were awakened by their barking dog.

“I went out onto the roof of the building and looked down and saw the car in the shrubs,” Cruciani said.

Cruciani said he later saw MacDowell’s girlfriend by the BMW.

“She was very upset and crying,” he said.

Stenson said that about six months ago her former roommate was held up by three gunmen in the parking lot of her apartment. Two men put guns to his head and searched his car before fleeing without taking anything, she said.

“This is a residential neighborhood,” said Craig Mazin, a resident at the same apartment complex. “But this is L. A . . . it’s hard to own an attractive car in this town without being nervous.”

There have been three fatal carjackings in the Valley in the past two months.

On March 30, Sherri Foreman was stabbed near an automated teller during a carjacking incident at a Sherman Oaks bank. Foreman later died of the wounds that also killed her unborn fetus.

Los Angeles police detectives arrested Robert Glen Jones on April 7, in connection with the slaying, police said. Jones, who has spent 14 of the past 17 years in prison, lived just two blocks from the bank where Foreman was stabbed.

In a separate incident, a young man fleeing the robbery of a Van Nuys grocery store stole a car at a railroad crossing, crashed the stolen auto into a power pole and was killed, police said.

On March 15, a gunman killed Naghi Ghoraishy, 74, at a gas station near Ghoraishy’s Chatsworth residence and fled in the dead man’s Mercedes-Benz.

The spate of violent incidents, in addition to others throughout Los Angeles County, prompted Gov. Pete Wilson to call for legislation that would classify carjacking as a violent crime and would impose stiffer penalties.

Although a federal anti-carjacking law went into effect more than five months ago, the state law is needed because carjackings do not always meet specific circumstances needed to invoke the federal standards, Wilson has said.

But despite the rash of incidents and the attention that carjackings have received from state and federal lawmakers, the Los Angeles Police Department has said that it does not use the term “carjack” and that the department refers to such crimes as “robbery grand theft auto.”

The term, however, is used in the law that makes the crime a federal offense and the FBI uses the term in gathering statistics on the number of such crimes, an FBI spokesman said.

Times staff writers Aaron Curtiss and Alicia Di Rado contributed to this story.

Carjackings

A gunman shot and killed Thomas MacDowell, 32, outside a North Hollywood apartment (1) during a carjacking early Tuesday and in a separate incident just miles away, a subcontract worker for Caltrans, William Edward Fliehmann of Whittier, was also killed in a truckjacking (2) at about the same time on a freeway on-ramp, Los Angeles police said.