Robberies Bring Jarring Realization : Antelope Valley: Residents who thought they were isolated from urban violence learn they were wrong.

Located about 70 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, this suburban community in the Antelope Valley is about as far from the inner city as you can get in Los Angeles County.

Local residents, many of whom fled from the high home prices and crime of bigger cities, have always said they like it that way. Their isolation provided a sense of security from much of the basin’s often senseless violence--until recently.

In a wake-up jolt to the community, gun-toting robbers have invaded Palmdale’s 3-year-old shopping mall three times in the past two months. Two of the crimes resulted in gunfire that sent mall customers ducking for cover and led to wild street chases as the robbers tried to flee.

Then there was more bad news. When suspects were quickly captured in two of the cases, it turned out they weren’t local residents. Most of the six were from inner-city areas and were affiliated with street gangs there, county sheriff’s deputies said.

In something of a watershed event locally, Antelope Valley officials and residents have been shocked by the brazenness of the crimes and by the dawning realization that even their remote community is not immune to urban gang violence.

That’s a new and frightening discovery for people in the high desert. But law enforcement and gang workers say it’s just the latest chapter in the continuing saga of urban Los Angeles street gang members spreading their violence literally across the country.

“It’s happening everywhere,” said Sgt. Wes McBride of the sheriff’s anti-gang unit. “It really shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s been spreading into suburbia for the last several years.”

Nationally, crime spawned by Los Angeles gang members has traveled most commonly as their families move elsewhere, often ironically to escape crime in Los Angeles, he said. But gang members also are known to commute for crime to locales around the state and outside, leaving few places out of reach.

McBride recalled one instance in which a gang used stolen credit cards to book airline flights to Seattle for jewelry store robberies. And he said police have coined the term I-5 bandits for gang members who traverse California on Interstate 5 in search of prey.

“People are a little taken aback by this,” said Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, referring to his community’s reaction to the mall robberies. “I think people expect us to be different. But when you see these things happen, you go into a reality check.”

Even before the robberies, Ledford said residents reported altering their mall trips to avoid weekend and night times when local young people in gang dress linger. Now after the robberies, Ledford said, “My gut instinct tells me people are re-evaluating their shopping to a new level.”

Officials at the Antelope Valley Mall in Palmdale, meanwhile, say they plan to replace the blazers now worn by their private security guards with uniforms that resemble police garb. The city and the mall plan to sponsor periodic sheriff’s bicycle patrols and discuss increasing mall security.

The Palmdale mall is hardly alone in its troubles. There were two robbery-murders by gang members that began at the Puente Hills Mall in 1991, a gang shootout at the Westside Pavilion in 1992, and a shooting of a 13-year-old girl at Orange County’s Westminster Mall this month.

One of the biggest questions about the Antelope Valley Mall robberies for some local residents, if the current suspects are convicted, is why reputed inner-city gang members would travel all the way to the high desert.

Law enforcement officials, gang workers and others said Los Angeles gang members probably perceive the area as an easy and unsuspecting target, figure they are not likely to be recognized by local deputies, and expect to find more valuable loot than in the areas where they live.

In addition, some speculate that heightened private security at Los Angeles-area businesses after last year’s riots has made outlying areas more attractive. And the high desert’s vast terrain of nearly 1,300 square miles in Los Angeles County makes criminals mistakenly expect an easy escape.

Sgt. Greg Collins, head of the gang detail at the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Station in Lancaster, said the investigation of the three mall incidents is focusing on the prospect that street gang members were recruited for the crimes, particularly for the two jewelry store robberies.

The incidents could have some relation to similar so-called smash-and-grab jewelry store robberies in other communities around the state. In those as in the two Palmdale jewelry store robberies, young men have held employees at gunpoint, smashed the display cases and then often fled by switching cars.

Collins said that the three Palmdale incidents may have been related, but investigators have not yet been able to substantiate any connection.

“It could be there is a group or groups doing it,” Collins said.

In the first Palmdale incident, four men, one with a gun, robbed the mall’s Classic Jewelers on the afternoon of June 2 of about $700,000 worth of items. One robber and two guards traded gunfire just outside the mall, and the men fled in a car and headed south on the Antelope Valley Freeway.

But, according to authorities, that car broke down, so the men forced a woman out of her car at gunpoint at a park-and-ride lot in Palmdale. They then drove north to Lancaster, where the car crashed and the men were arrested, one after a shootout with a deputy. No one was hit in either shooting.

Court records show the men who are in custody awaiting trial had prior convictions for crimes including robbery and manslaughter. They are Jabarr Abdul Wheeler, 20, of Compton; Lamont Terrell Craig, 23, of Hawthorne; Darnell Du-shyne Sullivan, 25, of Los Angeles, and Clyde R. Hayes, 28, of Louisiana.

Prosecutors said Wheeler has aliases of Mr. Jaydone and Jabone, and Craig has aliases of G Nut, LC and TC, which authorities described as gang-type nicknames. Sullivan’s grandfather said his grandson was in a gang before being sent to state prison and lately had again hung out with unsavory friends.

The second robbery occurred June 18 at the same mall store. Four other men executed the same type of robbery, getting away with about $150,000 worth of jewelry despite a 2 1/2-hour search by deputies. Deputies could not say whether the men, who remain at large, were gang members.

Then on July 15, two men--one with a gun--tried to rob a Brinks armored car guard of his money satchel as he walked through the mall’s J.C. Penney store. Instead, they were shot and wounded as the guard fired three times, leaving blood splattered in the store.

The pair fled in a car but didn’t get far. A 17-year-old Inglewood youth, who has not been identified because of his age, was arrested after collapsing in the doorway of a nearby Target store. A 29-year-old Inglewood parolee, Alonzo M. Bright, was arrested after crashing a car, which ended the pursuit.

Deputies said the juvenile identified himself as a gang member. They said he also told them that Bright, who allegedly carried the gun and has a conviction for receiving stolen property, met at the mall just before the robbery attempt with two men whom the juvenile identified as Compton-area gang members.

“That’s the trend now,” said Chilton Alphonse, head of a Crenshaw area anti-gang group, saying Los Angeles’ inner-city gangs are increasingly focusing on crimes that will raise money. Alphonse said he was not surprised to hear of the robbery episodes in Palmdale.

“I don’t know one gang set that’s not trying to do that,” Alphonse said. “They can’t get jobs. They’ve got (criminal) records. They just see no way out. They just don’t care. That’s the frightening part about this.”

Alphonse, head of the Community Youth, Sports and Arts Foundation, blamed the inner city’s lack of jobs, social programs and general sense of despair for pushing young men into crime, and said he sees little hope for the future.

“You can’t keep putting a Band-aid on an open wound,” he said.

From a broad perspective, the Antelope Valley gang problem, even with the emerging issue of out-of-the-area gang members, pales compared to problems faced by many other communities. But for an area that didn’t even consider itself to have a gang problem until recent years, the change has been traumatic.

Officials estimate there are 150,000 gang members in nearly 1,100 distinct gang groups in Los Angeles County, not including taggers. Collins estimated the Antelope Valley, with nearly 300,000 residents, has 2,200 gang members in about 20 active groups.

The Antelope Valley had its first official gang homicide in January, 1990, when a Lancaster high school student was shot at a party. Deputies tallied one in 1991 and then six in 1992--a small share of last year’s 803 gang-related homicides countywide. The county’s tally grows every year.

Deputies also say Antelope Valley gang members traditionally have not committed such planned, high-profile crimes as the mall robberies. And Collins said deputies have done a good job of suppressing local gangs and catching out-of-towners when they venture into the area.

But for the first four months of this year, sheriff’s deputies reported gang-related crime in the Antelope Valley was up 12% over the same period in 1992. Homicides declined, but there were increases in reported rapes, robberies, assaults and burglaries.

Similarly, the severity of crime associated with the mall in Palmdale has been increasing ever since the original 750,000-square-foot complex opened in September, 1990. In 1991, there were at least five jewelry thefts, but four occurred at night while the mall was closed.

Last year, the mall had at least two armed robberies of stores during business hours. The complex also had its first two shooting incidents between suspected local gang members in the parking lot. No one was seriously injured. Then came this year’s three incidents.

“To see that happen up here is really a wake-up call,” said Bill Pricer, head of United Community Action Network, an Antelope Valley anti-gang group. Pricer urges residents to get involved in the gang fight, warning, “I think before the summer’s over, we’re going to have more of the same.”