2 Charged in Shooting of Tourists : Crime: A third suspect is being sought in the slaying of a German woman and the wounding of her husband near Idyllwild.

Two 19-year-old Banning residents were arrested early Wednesday by Riverside County Sheriff’s Department homicide investigators in the slaying of a 62-year-old German tourist and the wounding of her husband last week near Idyllwild.

Authorities said the two men were associates of an Asian street gang, but that gang activity was not believed to be a factor in the attack on the couple. They were shot at a scenic viewpoint alongside California 243, overlooking Hemet in the San Jacinto Mountains.

A third suspect remains at large, said Deputy Mark Lohman, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

The arrests came nine days after the May 16 robbery and killing, which left Gisela Pfleger dead from gunshot wounds to her head. Her husband, Klaus Pfleger, 64, was critically wounded with two gunshots to his face and another in his shoulder.

At a crowded news conference Wednesday, Lohman offered no details of the investigation that led to the arrest of the two teen-agers after an all-night interrogation. He said the handgun believed to have been used in the shooting and the suspected getaway car were seized by detectives who searched four homes in the Banning area Tuesday.

Three teen-agers who were taken in for questioning Tuesday afternoon were released Wednesday. All five had been rounded up without resistance Tuesday when more than 30 law enforcement officers served search warrants simultaneously at four Banning residences.

Lohman identified the shooting suspects as Xou Yang and Khamchan (Brett) Ketsouvannasane. Both were born in Laos and are legal U.S. residents, he said. They were being held at a Riverside County detention center in Murrieta on $250,000 bail, and were expected to be arraigned Friday.

Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Bentley said his office would decide today whether to prosecute the suspects as a capital case because of the special circumstances of a murder in the commission of a robbery.

Lohman would not disclose whether the two suspects were previously known to law enforcement authorities or had criminal records.

He credited the arrests to “dozens and dozens of tips and leads and good old-fashioned police work” that involved more than 100 officers from several police agencies.

Lohman said the suspects were connected to “an Asian gang that has ties throughout the state.”

San Diego State University sociology professor Kenji Ima said that unlike geographically defined Latino gangs, Southeast Asian gangs are typically mobile and far-flung. Lohman reiterated Wednesday that the Pflegers apparently were the tragic victims of a random act and were not targeted as foreign tourists.

The couple had arrived in Southern California three days before the shooting to visit a daughter in Redondo Beach and for sightseeing. They drove an unmarked rental car up the winding, two-lane mountain highway from Banning. The couple pulled over to the side of the road eight miles from Idyllwild to take in the view at the Indian Vista lookout.

It was unclear what words, if any, were exchanged between the assailants and the German-speaking couple before the shooting erupted. Gisela Pfleger died at the scene but her husband was able to struggle to his car and drive half a mile to a parking lot, where a passerby summoned help.

The condition of the husband, a retired customs worker, was upgraded to fair Wednesday by his physicians at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs.

Because of his shattered jaw, Pfleger has communicated clues to investigators primarily by writing notes in German.