Lawsuit Alleges Attacks Linked to Contractors of Carole Little : Courts: Ex-employee makes the charges in wrongful-termination suit. Company denies liability.

A former Carole Little employee who survived three attempts on her life contends in a lawsuit filed against the company that she was attacked “as a direct . . . result” of the apparel maker’s efforts to terminate arrangements with sewing contractors and vendors.

Law enforcement officials are investigating three slayings and several threats and assaults involving Carole Little employees and contractors. They are looking into possible connections between the violence and the garment maker’s business dealings with contractors.

Karin Wong-Holzinger, who worked at Carole Little for two years, filed a wrongful-termination suit after surviving a freeway shooting and two firebombings of her home in 1993. She alleges the company fired her while she was on sick leave, recovering from the traumatic experience.

Leonard Rabinowitz, co-chairman of Carole Little, declined to comment on the lawsuit but said, “If someone resorted to violence, that’s terrible, that’s not the way things get resolved.”

Attorney Howard Weitzman, who is representing the company in the suit, said only that Carole Little has done nothing wrong.

In court documents filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the company argues that it is not liable for damages because it did not commit the assaults against Wong-Holzinger, her work environment was safe, and whatever happened to her outside the workplace was the result of actions taken by Wong-Holzinger alone.

According to the lawsuit filed last year, Wong-Holzinger said it was her job to “reduce the number of contractors and vendors with whom the company conducted business and to concentrate contracts with certain designated contractors.”

“They put her out in the line of fire and said, ‘Do it this way,’ ” said Wong-Holzinger’s attorney, Carol Anderson. “Then they walked away and left her on her own with no security, no protection and no job.”

Because of economic pressures, apparel makers have been whittling away at the ranks of contractors they use to sew and cut garments. Many contractors are wholly dependent on individual manufacturers for their livelihood.

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In an interview Thursday, Wong-Holzinger said she was recruited by Carole Little and hired with the understanding that she would cut back on the 45 sewing contractors the company was using in 1991. She let go about 18 of them, giving them four weeks’ notice.

But in 1993, the company again wanted to further limit the number of contractors, Wong-Holzinger said.

She said upset contractors began calling, angry and pleading with her over the phone: “Why me? Why me?”

“ ‘You’re taking food out of my children’s mouths, and I’ll make sure you have no food on your table,’ ” Wong-Holzinger said one contractor told her over the phone.

A month later, a bullet pierced Wong-Holzinger’s Mercedes-Benz as she was traveling to work on the Redondo Freeway. On Sept. 7, 1993, an explosive device was detonated against her house, knocking loose bricks. For a week, Carole Little provided a security guard at Wong-Holzinger’s Long Beach home. On Nov. 3, 1993, a second bomb rocked her house, blowing out windows and splintering the front door.

Hours before the second bombing of Wong-Holzinger’s home, Hakop (Jack) Antonyan, co-owner of GAHA, a contracting firm that had survived as one of Carole Little’s major contractors, had been shot and killed.

Wong-Holzinger says she doesn’t know who is behind the Antonyan slaying or the attacks against her, but a suspect in both incidents was arrested.

Karapet Demirdzhyan, 35, is being prosecuted on first-degree murder charges in the death of Antonyan. He is being held without bail in Los Angeles County Jail. He was previously charged in the bombing of Wong-Holzinger’s home, but the charge later was dropped.

According to court records and transcripts, Antonyan’s brother, Garnik, noted two men parked outside his Studio City home, watching him. They claimed to have car trouble. The night of the slaying, as he stood outside with his brother, he saw a white car drive by. The car then returned, stopped in the middle of the street, and one of the occupants began shooting at Jack Antonyan.

Garnik Antonyan later identified Demirdzhyan as one of the men he had seen near his home that night and eventually identified him as the triggerman.

According to testimony given at a court hearing last August, Garnik Antonyan said GAHA’s only customer had been Carole Little and that GAHA’s business had increased markedly in 1992 and 1993.

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Glendale Detective John McKillop testified that in July, 1993, four months before Antonyan’s killing, Carole Little mandated that the firm cut the number of contractors it was using. McKillop told the court that about 27 contracting firms were sliced out of Carole Little’s operation. Once the cuts were made, only about 15 contractors remained, McKillop said, and GAHA had the “lion’s share” of the business.

“He received the second-largest amount of orders from Carol Little,” McKillop said, adding that it was “millions of dollars’ worth of business, annually.”

Shortly after the cuts were ordered, McKillop said, Wong-Holzinger was “personally attacked, shot at, bombed and verbal threats made to her via the phone.”