Intruder Slain in Gun Battle With Resident

An armed man who reportedly forced his way into a home with two accomplices was shot and killed in a gunfight with one of the residents, police said Monday.

Family members said the series of events began about 9:15 p.m. Sunday when a man holding a box knocked on the front door of the house in the 2300 block of West Cubbon Street. The man said he was selling cookies for a local church fund-raiser.

Cristina Candelario, 26, said she told the man to wait for her to get her purse. But before she could return, she said, one of her uncles opened the locked security gate at the front door, and the man walked inside the house waving a pistol.

The man ordered everyone to the floor, Candelario said, and demanded money and drugs.

She ran into a bedroom and called police, then huddled with her children. The other six family members also scrambled for protection in different bedrooms, she said.

One of the intruders grabbed and held her 6-year-old daughter until Candelario gave him $350 in cash, she said.

Meanwhile, Candelario’s parents escaped through their bedroom window, police said. Her father, Ramiro Candelario, 53, fired a rife into the air to scare the attackers, police said.

Gunfire was exchanged, and one of the attackers was shot to death.

The dead man, whose name was withheld pending notification of his family, was identified only as a Santa Ana resident about 30 years old.

A second man, Jorge Javier Rivera Sanchez, 20, of Santa Ana, was arrested. The third man escaped and remained at large Monday, police said.

Police and family members on Monday said that they do not know why the men targeted them.

“I don’t know what they planned to do with us,” said Cristina Candelario. “I thought I was going to die.”

Ramiro Candelario, who runs a business in Orange which imports soft drinks from Mexico, said, “I don’t know what they were looking for. I don’t have any bad relations with anyone.”