Two Teen-Agers Face Charges in Beach Rape : Crime: Arrests follow an 8-month investigation into Laguna assaults last July. A third suspect is still at large.

After an eight-month investigation, police arrested two Ontario teen-agers Wednesday morning on a variety of charges in connection with a rape last summer on Crescent Bay Beach.

Police said Floyd Robert Sullivan, 18, and a 17-year-old boy face charges of robbery, kidnaping, false imprisonment, rape, sodomy and assault with a deadly weapon for their alleged roles in the incident that shocked residents here last July.

A third suspect, identified as Robert Robles, 22, is at large and is believed to be in Northern California, police said.

Sullivan is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail at Orange County Jail. The 17-year-old, whose name was withheld because he is a minor, is being held at Orange County Juvenile Hall.

“It’s a heinous crime. Anytime that somebody is raped, brutally raped, and sodomized on the beach that’s a very bad crime. It rates right up there,” said Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Lance Ishmael.

The arrests were “the culmination of an awful lot of work,” Ishmael said. “This particular incident required a lot of tenacity on the part of our investigators. It was a whodunit right from the beginning. Through some very diligent and hard work on the investigators’ part, we were able to piece this thing together.”

According to police reports of the incident, a 20-year-old Pomona man and his 19-year-old La Habra girlfriend were sitting on the beach about 1 a.m. when three young men approached them wielding a shotgun and baseball bat.

Two of the men bound the boyfriend while the third held the shotgun to his head. Then the man with the shotgun took the woman--her hands tied--to another area of the beach and repeatedly raped her, police said.

While the woman was being assaulted, her boyfriend freed himself and began searching for her, police said. One of the attackers allegedly pointed the shotgun at him and tried to fire it, but the weapon did not discharge, police said.

The attackers fled, and the victims went to a local market to call police.

Eight months and dozens of interviews later, Laguna Beach detectives and Ontario police gathered enough evidence to make arrests. They served warrants at the suspects’ homes early Wednesday.

“It gives you a sense of satisfaction to be able to catch the people responsible for a crime as violent as this one,” Laguna Beach Detective Hector Pantoja said. “When you start out with a crime that you have basically nothing to go on, and after a very long investigation, you’re able to produce some results, it’s very satisfying.”

Asked how the case was solved, Pantoja said, “We got some tips that we corroborated, then we did some stakeouts, we followed some people, we took some pictures, and did some lineups.”

Pantoja said the suspects confirmed that they are members of a gang, but investigators are unsure whether the robbery-rape had any gang connection.