Reluctant Hero Foils Kidnaping in Garden Grove

Edward Estrada had no idea when he stopped to answer a call on his pager early Monday morning that he would wind up getting into a struggle with a shotgun-toting stranger bent on kidnaping a woman.

But then he saw the barrel of a shotgun pointed at his stomach and the gunman’s finger on the trigger.

“I never felt so vulnerable,” said Estrada, 41, of Garden Grove. “It was like I was in the water surrounded by sharks.”

No one was seriously injured in the incident, and a man was later arrested on suspicion of attempted kidnaping and assault with a deadly weapon, Police Lt. John Woods said.

The drama began to unfold about 1 a.m. after Estrada, a window washer who had just gotten off work, stopped at a phone booth at a shopping center near Brookhurst Street and Westminster Avenue to answer a call on his pager.

As he was talking on the phone, Estrada said he saw a woman tumble out of a moving pickup truck.

“I saw a leg pop out,” he said. “Then a woman fell out, doing two somersaults before she hit the back of her head on the road.”

Woods said the pickup driver had offered the unidentified 24-year-old woman a ride after she got in a fight with her date several blocks away. But when the woman wanted to get out of the truck, the driver held her back and kept driving. After a struggle, the woman opened the door and jumped out of the truck.

Shaken but apparently uninjured, the woman ran over to Estrada. He said the woman spoke in Vietnamese and he could not understand what she was saying, but there was no mistaking her terror as she threw her arms around him.

“She wouldn’t let go,” Estrada said. “I was her life jacket.”

The pickup screeched to a halt not far from where Estrada and the woman stood. The driver got out and shouted threats as he approached them. Estrada said he took out his pager and pretended to be calling police.

At first the ruse seemed to work. The man jumped back into his truck and drove off through the shopping center parking lot. But he made an abrupt U-turn and drove back. When he emerged from the truck this time, he had a shotgun, Estrada said.

When the woman refused to get into the truck, the assailant leveled the shotgun at Estrada’s stomach.

“I saw him pump the shotgun, then I saw him swallowing,” Estrada said. “I knew he was ready to shoot.”

Estrada said he grabbed the barrel and struggled with the assailant. Finally, Estrada said he let go of the shotgun, and he and the woman ran.

The woman managed to cross the parking lot to a fast-food restaurant. The assailant pushed Estrada out of the way, jumped into his pickup and drove off after her. Estrada said the man had the shotgun pointed out the window as he drove over the concrete islands “as if they weren’t there.”

However, the woman flagged down a passerby in a gray Honda, Estrada said. He then called police. The Garden Grove woman returned a short while later with a translator and told her story to police.

About two hours later, officers arrested a pickup driver in the vicinity, and called Estrada to the Police Department to identify him, he said. A shotgun in the pickup was seized, Woods said.