SIMI VALLEY : Retired Officer Foils Carjacking

An attempted Simi Valley carjacking was foiled when a retired police lieutenant chased the thieves and dodged gunfire before recovering his son’s pickup truck, authorities said Thursday.

Thomas Lafferty, 49, chased the carjackers after they followed his 21-year-old son, Brian, to his parents’ Simi Valley home Wednesday night and forced him at gunpoint to surrender his truck keys, Brian Lafferty said.

Brian Lafferty said the two men who confronted him and his 18-year-old girlfriend in his garage fled in his pickup, joining a second car with perhaps two other suspects in it.

Thomas Lafferty, who retired in 1987 after nearly 20 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, gave chase in his car after hearing of the robbery while his son called police, Brian Lafferty said.

After the elder Lafferty followed the two vehicles onto the Simi Valley Freeway, the car pulled alongside and a gunman leaned out the window and fired several shots, Brian Lafferty said.

He said his father fell back but stayed on their tail.

After leaving the freeway at Kuehner Drive, the pickup ran into a curb and the suspects abandoned the vehicle and fled, apparently on foot, Simi Police Sgt. Mike King said. Neither they nor the other vehicle were found.

Lafferty, who last served as a lieutenant at the LAPD’s Valley Traffic Division, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

His son, who says he has been accepted to the Rio Hondo Police Academy in Whittier, said, “It’s stuff like this that makes me really want to do it, to make people that do crimes like this pay for it.”

It was the second carjacking this year in Simi Valley, Sgt. King said.