High-Speed Heroics : Good Samaritan’s Freeway Pursuit of Suspected Kidnapers Leads to Their Arrests

It was Johnny Pagnini’s greatest race.

At the wheel of his newly purchased 1966 Corvette, the Costa Mesa motorcycle buff and sometime-racer helped police capture two suspected kidnapers Sunday night after a zigzagging high-speed freeway chase.

Pagnini, who manages a Santa Ana motorcycle shop, said he gave chase after spotting a woman struggling with a man in the back seat of a car on the Costa Mesa Freeway in Santa Ana. The pursuit ended about 30 miles later in Long Beach after the suspects apparently disabled their car when they rammed his $40,000 sports car, which was still uninsured.

Pagnini said that at one point he feared the woman was being pushed out an open car door at top speed, then worried he might be shot for keeping up the chase, even after the pair stopped to let the woman go.

“I thought about that stuff--and my kids,” he said Monday. “It was just something I felt I had to do.”

Ricardo B. Ramirez, 18, and Mario Garay, 21, both from Santa Ana, were arrested on suspicion of kidnaping and attempting to rape the woman, a Tustin resident who met the pair recently, Tustin police said.

The woman, who was not identified, was treated for minor injuries, police said.

She and a female friend rode with the two men to a convenience store on McFadden Street in Tustin after 8 p.m., police said. While the friend was in the store, the suspects drove off with the victim, police said. They made their way to the Costa Mesa Freeway and Ramirez tried to sexually assault her in the car, police said.

Pagnini, 38, and his friend Cindy Jarvis pulled onto the freeway in his Corvette about the same time. He said he spotted the suspects’ car, an Oldsmobile, and saw the woman fighting with a man in the back seat. Jarvis thought the two were playing until Pagnini pulled close behind and, in the light of his headlamps, saw the woman’s terrified expression.

“The look in the girl’s face is one I will never, ever forget--the fright,” he said. “Her face was against the back window and I could see the guy swinging at her.”

The car then sped away, Pagnini said, but he followed it north on the San Diego Freeway. He said the woman fought furiously. A rear door flapped open and her leg flew out. Pagnini thought for a moment she was about to be pitched out into traffic.

But the suspects’ car pulled over near the Brookhurst Street exit and the woman got out. Pagnini dropped off Jarvis, who stayed with the victim until police arrived, and took up the chase again.

The two cars hit speeds of about 100 m.p.h., Pagnini said. They weaved in and out of traffic, briefly skittered onto surface streets and then ended up on the Long Beach Freeway.

When he inadvertently got ahead of the suspects’ car, it rammed his Corvette, but was apparently disabled in the collision. As the suspects’ car stalled on an off-ramp, another motorist summoned police from a pay phone and the men were arrested without incident, said Tustin Police Sgt. Mike Pettifer.

Police were grateful for the happy ending, but advised would-be good Samaritans simply to take down a license plate number and call police.

“It turned out OK--the suspects were taken into custody,” said Pettifer. “Because it turned out OK, I guess the guy’s a hero. But I certainly don’t encourage people taking that much action.”