Police Identify 2 as Suspects in Slaying of Officer : Law enforcement: Both men resemble witnesses’ descriptions and both were fugitives at time of killing. The gunman’s car is believed to be a rare Daihatsu Charade.

Detectives on Tuesday identified two men as suspects in the Dec. 27 slaying of Manhattan Beach Police Officer Martin Ganz during a seemingly routine traffic stop and said the car used by the killer is a relatively rare Daihatsu Charade.

Sgt. Robert Stoneman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said investigators are seeking Ching Ming Tao, 37, and Jong Pal Kim, 30, because both resemble witnesses’ descriptions, both were fugitives when Ganz was shot and both are thought to be willing to fire on a police officer to avoid arrest.

“They are considered armed and dangerous,” Stoneman said. “We believe they had a motive to commit another violent crime.”

The Sheriff’s Department did not reveal evidence linking Tao or Kim directly to the killing of Ganz, a crime that investigators believe was committed by just one man.

Tao, who has relatives in West Covina and Monterey Park, has been wanted by Los Angeles police since last year on suspicion of possession of a machine gun and related counts, Stoneman said.

“He is a survivalist type--someone who could disappear into the jungle and survive just fine,” the sergeant said.

Kim, a former Gardena resident, is wanted in the 1989 slaying of his girlfriend in the Wilshire District.

“He’s been a fugitive since then,” Stoneman said. “Because he may have crossed a state line, the FBI is looking for him too.”

Stoneman said the names of Tao and Kim were culled from hundreds of tips that investigators received in the aftermath of the Ganz shooting.

“I can’t be specific about what was said, but (one of the calls) led us to discover that Tao was wanted and considered to be armed . . . and an extreme danger to a police officer,” Stoneman said. “The other guy was brought to our attention in the same manner. Someone identified him as a person we might want to look at.”

Ganz, 29, a Garden Grove resident, was working on holiday drunk-driving abatement patrol when he used his patrol car loudspeaker in stopping a vehicle in front of the Manhattan Village shopping mall about 11 p.m. for a traffic violation. With Ganz in his patrol car was his 13-year-old nephew, who was participating in a department-sponsored ride-along program.

Investigators say that when Ganz got out, the suspect opened fire. Ganz retreated behind his patrol car and the suspect followed him, firing several more shots. Ganz, who was struck three times, pulled his pistol but did not return fire. Detectives say the gunman pointed his semiautomatic pistol at the 13-year-old but did not pull the trigger.

As the suspect sped away in a small car, the boy called for help on the radio of the patrol car. Ganz was pronounced dead about 45 minutes later at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

The boy and another witness provided descriptions of the suspect--a somewhat heavyset Asian man in his 30s--that could fit Tao or Kim, Stoneman said. The sergeant said there is a strong resemblance between photographs of Tao and a composite drawing based on the descriptions provided by the two witnesses.

Stoneman said a surveillance camera outside a bank in the shopping mall provided pictures of the suspect’s car that have led detectives to identify it as a 1988 to 1992 Daihatsu Charade, a small Japanese vehicle no longer marketed here.

The Sheriff’s Department said that because relatively few Charades were sold in this country, investigators are contacting everyone known to have one in an attempt to identify the car used in the shooting.

“There were none reported stolen, none abandoned and none found,” Stoneman said. “We’re using the process of elimination.”