Slaying Victim’s Family Consoled : Crime: Strangers leave bouquets at the scene where jogger was shot. Neighbors reflect fearfully on intrusion of violence. Police sort through callers’ tips.

Vern Chinen never met his neighbor Jane Carver. Even as he dropped off a sympathy card to her grieving relatives, Chinen wasn’t sure of the name.

But such distinctions mattered little Monday as Chinen joined a parade of strangers who came bearing cards and flowers, and who tried to shed their disbelief by viewing firsthand the sidewalk where Carver was shot dead Saturday while jogging in broad daylight near her home.

The Carvers are familiar fixtures within the quiet enclave off Warner Avenue; their house sits prominently just off Mt. Marcus Street, and residents often saw Jane Carver jogging.

“Even though we don’t know them, it’s like you do because you see them every day,” Chinen said.

Just around the corner on Warner Avenue, a string of visitors dropped off bouquets all day at the spot where Carver, a 46-year-old United Airlines flight attendant and mother of two, was slain. The shooting has confounded police and residents alike.

County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who lives about half a mile away from the shooting scene and whose sons played high school baseball with Carver’s oldest son, Cliff, said the slaying was painful for a community accustomed to tranquillity.

“Over the years, we have come to believe that we live in an island, untouched by the violence we see on the 11 o’clock news. And it’s heart-wrenching when something like this happens,” Stanton said.

“We are all broken up about this.”

Carver’s family members gathered Monday inside their two-story home. At lunchtime, her son Cliff walked out to the site of his mother’s slaying and knelt weeping before the spread of roses, carnations, daffodils and daisies.

Another relative gave thanks for the community’s compassion.

“It’s great, all the support we’ve been getting,” said Jane Carver’s brother-in-law, also named Cliff. “It’d be nice if the police catch the person and maybe there would be closure.”

Police investigators were sorting through more than 100 tips from callers after releasing a sketch Sunday of the lone male being sought in the killing. About 12 officers have been assigned to work around the clock to solve the crime, Lt. Bob Mosley said. But detectives still have no motive and no suspects.

“We can’t make any sense of it,” Police Chief Elvin G. Miali said. “We’re trying everything and we can’t find a rhyme or reason to this.”

The shooting took place as Carver was finishing her jog about 8 a.m. Saturday. She was approached by a motorist as she rounded the turn onto Mt. Marcus Street just a quarter-block from her house and directly across the street from Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center. Police said she was shot in the face and pronounced dead at Fountain Valley Regional.

Witnesses saw the assailant get into his car, make a U-turn and drive back through the neighborhood to Euclid Street, police said. The gunman was described as black, 30 to 40 years old, 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-8 and weighing 145 to 150 pounds.

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The family has set up a reward fund to assist in the capture of the killer. Donations may be sent to the Carver Family Reward Fund, c/o Wells Fargo Bank, 10060 Slater Ave., Fountain Valley 92708, attention Mark or Robbin.

The mysterious killing placed a cloud of unease over a neat neighborhood where residents keep an eye out for out-of-place cars, and the worst crime concerns are teens drinking beer at a nearby park.

“It’s like it’s a safe house,” said Mike Simmons, who for 10 years has lived on Heil Avenue not far where Carver was shot.

“Here you have Santa Ana just a couple blocks over and all the violence they have over there. For some reason it hasn’t flowed over here . . . because the community hasn’t let it,” said Simmons, an unemployed medical technician. “The violence is here now.”

The killing has stirred fears and jangled nerves.

Fountain Valley Councilwoman Laurann Cook said she was on her usual morning walk Monday--two miles from where Carver was killed--when she heard a car approach from behind.

“I was nearing home, just as she was,” Cook said. “I felt a qualm, an uneasy feeling, in my stomach until the car passed by. This has certainly made you more cautious when you’re out and about, and that angers me, that residents have to feel that apprehension.”

Mosley, area commander of the neighborhood from 1992 to 1994, said typical calls for police help there include burglaries and car break-ins. One of the biggest to-dos last year was a resident’s outcry over beer-drinking teens loitering in a park in the evenings.

“People there are just not accustomed to this type of thing happening,” Lt. Mosley said. “It’s really a shock to their psyche.”