Slaying Puts County Homicide Toll at 200 : Crime: A record number of people have been slain since Jan. 1, including a Tustin man shot Wednesday. Officials say a more violent society and the availability of guns contribute to the carnage.

A Tustin resident who opened his front door to a man claiming car trouble was shot Wednesday, becoming the 200th person slain in Orange County in 1993, the deadliest year in the county’s history.

Police said Enrique Arceo, 54, died at 1 a.m. on his doorstep in the 15800 block of Pasadena Avenue in Tustin. They don’t know who shot him or why, Tustin Police Lt. Frank Semelsberger said.

Orange County has surpassed its record of 186 deaths, set last year.

“I think it’s a whole lot of things,” said Jim Beisner, chief deputy at the coroner’s office. “I think it’s a more violent society and I think the availability of guns for these drive-by shootings” contributes to the carnage. “I think there’s a loss of respect for other peoples’ lives, and for some people, for their own lives.”

The number of suicides in Orange County was even greater this year than the number of homicides. According to Beisner, 260 people have died by their own hand.

The latest slaying occurred when a man knocked at Arceo’s door as he and his wife of seven months were in the living room. The man said in Spanish that his car needed a jump-start, said Carmen Arceo, 34. When her husband said he had no cables, the man asked to come in to use the telephone, she said. Arceo refused.

As Arceo tried to close the door, the man pushed his way inside and fired several shots from a handgun into Arceo’s upper body, then ran back into the night, she said.

“I went over to hug him and my daughter called police,” Arceo said. “He felt so cold. I just screamed and screamed. But no one came to help.”

The gunshots awakened Isabel Arceo, 14, who dialed 911 several times but it was busy, the family said. So she ran to get help from the apartment manager in the complex.

A busy signal on 911 occurs when all 10 lines of the number are in use, Lt. Jay Mendez of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said.

Arceo, a waiter at Los Panchos restaurant in Santa Ana, was also survived by four daughters from a previous marriage, a brother in La Mirada and four sisters in Mexico.

The victim’s only son, Enrique, was killed in a gang shooting two years ago at the age of 13, family members said.

Another record for the year was set in Huntington Beach this week, when the city’s first homicides occurred.

On Wednesday police released the names of the man and woman who were shot to death in a trailer home early Tuesday. They were Joshua W. Wells, 20, and Michelle Lawson, 32, both of Huntington Beach.

Wells lived at the trailer home in the Driftwood Beach Club on Pacific Coast Highway, said Huntington Beach Police Lt. Chuck Poe. Lawson lived nearby on Florida Street, he said.

Court records indicate that Wells pleaded guilty in August to having methamphetamine for sale. He failed to show up for a court appearance in November, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

“There is still a possibility that this is drug-related, but we have no evidence to prove it,” Poe said. “There was some drug paraphernalia found in the house.”

The victims were shot more than once, Poe said, adding that “more than one weapon (was) involved. . . . My guess is there may be more than one suspect.”

Detectives are “trying to track down friends and associates of the victims,” he said. “They are having trouble finding anybody who says they know these people.”

Investigators are also looking for a car seen leaving the scene of the shootings, a white Chevrolet open-bed mini-pickup, possibly an S10 model, with the word “Chevy” printed in black lettering on the tailgate.

Police have received some leads from callers on the department’s homicide hot line, and encourage anyone with information about the victims or the crime to call the 24-hour number at (714) 375-5066. Callers are not required to give their names.

Another double shooting occurred Tuesday at the Los Alamitos Race Course in Cypress. Police said Jose Manuel Chavez, 40, of Bell Gardens, shot his wife, Maria Ramona Chavez, 37, of Hawaiian Gardens, as she sat in a parked car. He then shot himself.

The carnage in Orange County this year is reflected both in the record number of employees, 46, in the Orange County coroner’s office and in the number of district attorney deputies handling homicide cases. A dozen now work full time on those cases and 10 others handle gang-related crimes, including homicides, according to supervising deputy Richard King.

“In the number of homicides that are reported by the coroner and in the number of homicides that are tried, I’ve seen a definite increase in the last 10 years, on both fronts,” King said.