Police Believe Slain Jogger Was Stalked by Gunman : Violence: Residents saw a suspect in the Fountain Valley neighborhood 3 to 4 weeks before Jane Carver was shot to death.

The gunman who killed jogger Jane Carver near her home June 10 probably stalked her for weeks and then tried to kidnap her on the day of the killing, police said Tuesday.

“She was alone,” Police Lt. Bob Mosley said. “We think this was an abduction-type thing.”

Mosley said detectives still do not know the identity of the killer, who shot Carver in the face as she was finishing a run on Warner Avenue, less than a block from her house. Witnesses said the man drove away in a white compact car that police now believe is a 1980s-model Plymouth Champ.

The stalker theory, now considered by police the most likely for the killing, is based on witness observations placing the assailant in the area before Carver’s death.

Witnesses told police they remembered seeing the man in the preceding three to four weeks in Carver’s neighborhood and near a local park where Carver, a 46-year-old flight attendant and mother of two, regularly jogged, Mosley said.

Police speculate that the man might have chosen Carver as his victim during one of her runs through Mile Square Park and then waited for an occasion when she was not accompanied by her husband, who also jogs, Mosley said.

Mosley said family members said they had never seen the man, based on a composite drawing produced from witnesses.

Carver’s husband, Albert, reiterated Tuesday that the family had no warning that a stranger might have been loitering in the neighborhood.

“We weren’t aware of anyone, and Janie never mentioned anyone,” Albert Carver said. “I really have to rely on the police investigation and all those eyes in the community.”

The suspect is described as black man, 30 to 40 years old, 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-8 and weighing 145 to 150 pounds.

The slaying stunned residents of Carver’s orderly neighborhood off Warner Avenue, which to many had felt like an enclave of safety.

Albert Carver and many neighbors said they keep a vigilant eye for anyone suspicious on the housing tract’s quiet streets, and a man loitering in a car would not have gone unnoticed.

“My husband is a retired police officer,” said one neighbor who declined to give her name. “If I’d have seen [the assailant], I’d have reported it. I report things all the time.”

Others remained baffled that a woman they described as warm and generous could have been killed. The stalker hypothesis offered no solace.

“It’s devastating,” said Jane Kurtz, a next-door neighbor to the Carvers for the past two decades whose children were raised with the Carvers’ children.

“It certainly affects us all. You don’t want it to, but it makes you afraid,” Kurtz said. “I haven’t been to the park since.”

Mosley said police are still exploring other scenarios, but began focusing on the stalker hypothesis after culling leads from hundreds of witnesses.

The probe has been exhaustive. A dozen investigators have been assigned to the case and police have sought witnesses through reward offers and even a roadblock near the shooting site last weekend in hopes of finding witnesses who might have driven past the scene of the crime a week earlier.

Witnesses said that during the weeks before the killing, they saw a man fitting the killer’s description parked in his car in Carver’s neighborhood and near the park where she jogged. He was spotted twice in the same area shortly before the shooting, police said.

On Tuesday, regulars at Mile Square Regional Park, just a block from the Carver home, said the possibility that Carver was stalked is chilling.

“I don’t know if it makes you feel better that it was a stalker, because then it could have been anybody,” said Connie George, 45, who walks in the park almost daily, sometimes with her 90-pound German shepherd, and had seen Carver jogging there on several occasions. “All you have to do is watch people’s patterns.”

Residents with information about the assailant or the car are asked to contact police at (714) 965-4466.