Intruders Kill Daughter of El Segundo Councilman : Crime: Victim’s daughter survives attack. Four suspects, including a former roommate, are arrested.

The daughter of an El Segundo city councilman was stabbed to death and her 12-year-old daughter’s throat was slashed during an attack early Wednesday morning in their El Segundo apartment.

Police arrested four suspects Wednesday afternoon in connection with the slaying of Tairree Lynne West. Using a description of the assailants provided by the injured girl, police arrested Robert Brendan Foster, an 18-year-old transient, on suspicion of murder near a Hollywood YMCA.

Marcus Brewington, 19, Linette Blocker, 18, and Erica Olsen were being held for questioning.

West, who allowed Olsen to stay in her home for days at a time in exchange for baby-sitting, recently received a large amount of money, El Segundo Police Sgt. Bill Fleming said. Foster and Olsen were arrested after they arrived at the YMCA in West’s 1987 Nissan. West, 25, the daughter of Councilman Alan West, was stabbed in the upper body and appeared to have been strangled in the attack about 1:30 a.m., said Sheriff’s Deputy Fidel Gonzalez. She was taken to Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead an hour later.

Ashley West, 12, who was adopted by West several years ago, was listed in fair condition at UCLA Medical Center. The girl, a sixth-grader at El Segundo Middle School, passed out after calling 911, Fleming said. She had a nine-inch gash from the top of her cheek to the middle of her throat and the attackers probably thought she was dead, Fleming said. Relatives are caring for Tairree West’s 6-month-old daughter, Carlie, who was found gagged but otherwise unharmed on a living room couch.

The attackers ransacked the victims’ apartment during the apparent robbery. West recently received a check for $5,000 to $10,000, but it was not taken, police said.

J. B. Wise, an El Segundo councilman and close friend of the family, said Tairree West “was just El Segundo country-type people. You always feel welcome around the whole family.”

The godparents of West’s two daughters, who asked not to be named, spent Tuesday evening at a family celebration. They left at about 11, the godmother said. The next day she heard her friend had been killed.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I keep thinking I can just call her up.”

West, who graduated from El Segundo High School, was separated from her husband, who is in the military in Georgia, the friend said.

West adopted Ashley after the girl’s mother--Tairree’s best friend--died, the friend said. Ashley was studying drama and dance in Hollywood while attending middle school and has appeared in one commercial.

A part-time worker at her brother’s El Segundo cleaning business, West lived with her children in an apartment complex near busy Imperial Highway. Residents there said they endure the noisy jets at nearby Los Angeles International Airport because their neighborhood has very little crime.

“Everyone pretty much knows each other,” said Denise Hearne, 26, who lives with her boyfriend in a nearby unit.

Patricia Moran, 26, said she moved to the neighborhood with her husband and baby a year ago to escape the crime in nearby Inglewood.

But some residents in the area feared that the recently completed Century Freeway would bring more crime into the community. Wise’s apartment building sits a mile from the freeway’s terminus in El Segundo.

El Segundo, a city of 15,223, is an enclave just west of Sepulveda Boulevard in the South Bay. The town is so sheltered that residents sometimes call it their “Mayberry.”

The mostly industrial city, home of Chevron, Hughes Aircraft, Northrop and Rockwell, had only one murder last year, police said.

Community correspondent Susan Woodward contributed to this story.