4 Arrested in West Hollywood Carjacking, Rape : Violence: Couple open their door to victim and call 911. A quick response by deputies results in the capture of the suspects in less than two hours.

The sound of knocking at doors in the West Hollywood apartment courtyard kept coming closer early Monday until the tapping was on their own windows. The woman outside said very calmly: “May I come in and use your phone? I’ve been raped.”

Donna Norton and her boyfriend, Tom Space, opened their door and Space dialed 911. The woman at the door “said she had been dumped in a dead-end alley, and she was carrying her sandals and her driver’s license,” Norton said Monday.

The response to the 911 call was almost instantaneous. Sheriff’s deputies--already alerted to the crime by an earlier caller--arrived at the apartment while Space was still talking to the 911 operator, and the suspects were arrested in less than two hours.

The crime began when four armed men accosted the 24-year-old woman and her date as they sat in a car in the 8300 block of Sunset Boulevard shortly before 1:30 a.m., deputies said. The men ordered the woman’s date out of the late-model purple Honda, drove away with her and forced her to commit various sexual acts, investigators said. They dumped her near the 9000 block of Rangely Avenue.

Alerted by the woman’s date and an anonymous man who came to his aid, deputies immediately dispatched patrol cars to the carjacking scene and put a helicopter in the air to search for the Honda, said Deputy Benita Hinojos, a department spokeswoman.

The helicopter spotted the stolen Honda at Robertson Boulevard and Beverlywood Street, three miles from where the woman had been abandoned, Hinojos said. Deputies set up a containment perimeter around the area and called in a K-9 unit, investigators said.

“One of the dogs found and bit a suspect in the right arm,” said Deputy Irma Becerra. The other three surrendered without incident, she said.

Authorities identified the suspects, all from Los Angeles, as Jerwainn Bryant, 20, Jerry Smith, 22, Derrick Cook, 21, and a 17-year-old boy whose identity was not released because he is a juvenile. The three adults were being held in lieu of $100,000 bail on suspicion of carjacking, kidnaping and rape, Hinojos said. The juvenile was being held without bail at Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

The man who had been forced from the Honda at gunpoint was taken to the arrest scene to identify the suspects. Deputies said they had to restrain him from attacking one of the men in custody.

The couple who assisted the rape victim believe she may have been in shock when she arrived at their door after knocking at several neighbors’ apartments and getting no response.

“She was very calm,” said Norton, an assistant accountant at a restaurant. “She was not crying. There were no hysterics. She said the men had held a gun to her date’s head.”

The woman’s abductors told her they needed the car “to get back to the ‘hood,” Norton said. The woman said the men threatened to kill her “if she didn’t do what they wanted.”

Norton noticed a large bump on the woman’s forehead and asked if she was aware of it.

“Oh, my God, that must be where they hit me with the gun,” the woman said.

The woman was in the apartment only about three minutes before deputies arrived, Norton said. She was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she was treated and released.

Norton said her boyfriend, Space, a restaurant chef, had taken a cab home from work Sunday night and they had been sitting up watching television and reading when the woman tapped on their window at about 1:45 a.m.

After helping the rape victim, Space told Norton that the cab driver had complimented his neighborhood, saying: “Nothing much ever happens here.”