Officer Saw ‘Movement,’ Shot Woman : Crime: Anaheim department veteran was protecting himself when he killed carjack suspect, police say. She was near the car with an alleged accomplice after it crashed on freeway shoulder.

A veteran Anaheim police officer who shot and killed a carjacking suspect late Thursday night was acting to protect himself after seeing “some kind of movement” by the woman or a second suspect, Police Chief Dave S. Barr said Friday.

“Apparently, there was some kind of movement that the officer was protecting himself from,” said Barr, whose department is conducting a joint investigation into the shooting, along with the Anaheim Police Department and the Orange County district attorney’s office.

No weapon was found on either the unidentified woman--whom police described as a prostitute--or her alleged accomplice, 32-year-old Timothy Mark Jackson of Compton, who was booked into the Anaheim City Jail on suspicion of homicide and robbery.

La Palma police refused to disclose whether investigators had found a weapon during a daylong search for evidence Friday that followed Thursday night’s chase of the suspects.

The incident began with the carjacking in an isolated area near an Anaheim motel and continued to the site of the shooting on the shoulder of the westbound Artesia Freeway, near the Valley View Street off-ramp.

But a source in the Anaheim Police Department said that investigators had found a weapon believed to be the one used to carjack the 1993 Ford Ranger from its unidentified driver on Beach Boulevard in Anaheim Thursday night.

Jackson and the woman were reportedly both standing outside the stolen vehicle when the woman was killed by a single shot fired by an unidentified Anaheim police officer, according to Barr and La Palma Police Capt. Vince Giampa.

“Both the female and the male went down the embankment in a tumbling fashion,” Barr said. “(Jackson) was taken into custody without any further incident at the bottom of the embankment.”

“We’re all trying to determine what happened and why,” Barr said.

The incident began with the carjacking at 7:25 p.m. in front of the Rustic Inn in the 900 block of Beach Boulevard.

Giampa said the driver of the truck, an unidentified man, picked up the woman, who was hitchhiking on Beach Boulevard. She directed him to park in an isolated area near the motel.

Police said Jackson suddenly appeared, armed with a handgun, according to the victim. Jackson then ordered the man, who is in his 20s, out of the vehicle, according to the La Palma police statement. The woman drove away from the area with Jackson as a passenger.

But the victim apparently didn’t lose everything. A manager at the motel said Friday that the victim carried his surfboard into the motel with him, saying the carjacker had insisted on dumping it.

The manager said the victim came rushing into the motel and said his vehicle had just been stolen at gunpoint on the street outside.

An Anaheim police helicopter responding to the man’s 911 call from the motel spotted a pickup truck matching the description of the carjacked vehicle at Beach Boulevard and the Artesia Freeway.

Jackson, who was now driving, led officers onto the westbound Artesia Freeway, where the vehicle crashed into a call box on the freeway shoulder within the La Palma city limits.

“Both occupants got out at that time and at that point the officer-involved shooting occurred,” Giampa said.

La Palma police officers did not arrive on the scene until after the shooting, Barr said.

Investigators searched the scene of the shooting for hours through early afternoon Friday, closing off the right lane of the westbound Artesia Freeway and backing up traffic for more than a mile.

Jackson is being held in the Anaheim jail on suspicion of carjacking and homicide. Under the felony murder rule, a suspect can be charged with murder whenever someone is killed during the commission of certain felonies.

Jackson was sentenced to prison for two years in 1987 for burglary and grand theft auto before being released in July, 1990, according to the California Department of Corrections. He returned to prison the same year, after being sentenced to three years for vehicle theft. He was released on parole in January, 1992.

Officials at the Anaheim Police Department refused to forward a Times reporter’s request for an interview to Jackson “because of the nature of what happened,” said Sgt. Phillip Lock.

Department policy allows visitors to be excluded “at the discretion” of the facility commander--without any specific rationale. After the carjacking and shooting, Lock said, “we feel this is going to be a high-profile case, so we’re not going to have a lawyer (for Jackson) yelling and screaming” because the suspect was allowed to talk about the shooting.

Anaheim Police Chief Randy Gaston referred comment on the investigation to La Palma police because the shooting occurred in their city.

Gaston said the officer, a sergeant with 21 years of experience, has been placed on paid administrative leave for three days, as is standard department procedure.

The district attorney’s office is investigating the shooting to determine whether there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, as it does in all officer-involved shootings under a county policy established in 1985. In all of the cases investigated since then, prosecutors have decided not to bring charges against the officers involved.

Times correspondent Terry Spencer contributed to this story.