3 Suspects in Gunfight May Be Linked to 2nd Robbery : Crime: Police say men arrested in Van Nuys might have held up an auto parts warehouse near Downtown earlier.

The three men who staged a running gun battle with police along busy Van Nuys streets after a holdup may have robbed an auto parts warehouse near Downtown one hour earlier, authorities said Friday.

“We’re investigating the possibility that they are connected,” Los Angeles Police Department Detective Mel Arnold said. “The descriptions seem similar.”

In the first robbery, at 1:25 p.m. Thursday, two workers were pistol-whipped and a female employee was shot at point-blank range after she had complied with the robbers’ demands to surrender her wallet, police said.

A little over an hour later gunfire erupted again, this time in Van Nuys where two people were critically wounded after police foiled the getaway of three men who had allegedly robbed several patients in a dental office.

Following a series of gun battles and a dramatic standoff, three suspects were taken into custody: Charles Knight, 21; Lamont Mitchell, 21, and his brother Michael Mitchell, 29, who was wounded and listed in fair condition Friday at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. Charges are expected to be filed Monday against all three men, police said.

Detectives are also checking whether the same men are responsible for another robbery about a month ago at a doctor’s office in Van Nuys, Arnold said.

Police were tipped by the owner of the auto parts warehouse, who said the getaway car used in the robbery at his business was similar to the one shown on television news reports in the Van Nuys incident.

Steve Cohen, owner of Automotive Undercar Warehouse in the 3600 block of Avalon Boulevard, said three gunmen entered his business about 1:25 p.m. and quickly jumped the counter and pistol-whipped two of his employees, one of whom passed out.

Cohen said the gunmen screamed at the men, “Where’s your cash register? Where’s your money?”

After handing over the money, the gunmen dragged the manager and a counter clerk across the warehouse and into an office with four other employees, including three women, Cohen said. All six employees were ordered to lay face down on the ground, he said.

“They were pointing their guns at them and they were hitting them,” Cohen said. “As they were beating them they kept shouting, ‘Where’s the money? Where’s the safe?’ ”

At one point, one of the gunmen punched an elderly male employee on the side of the head and then stuck a gun to the side of his face, again demanding to know where the safe was hidden, Cohen said. Then they turned to Cohen’s fiancee, who is a buyer for the business, and repeated the question.

“She said, ‘I don’t know,’ and handed them her wallet,” Cohen said. “She was shaking and [one of the gunmen] was standing point blank and he just shot her.”

The bullet, Cohen said, struck his fiancee’s right thigh and exited through her buttock. Police will compare bullet and shell casings recovered from the scene of both robberies.

Cohen said he saw the trio leave in a late-model, dark-colored Camaro.

“I turned around and ran out of the warehouse and I had plain view of the Camaro,” Cohen said.

Less than an hour later, three men stormed a dental office in the 7300 block of Sepulveda Boulevard and demanded jewelry and money from patients and workers. A doctor and a nurse were pistol-whipped.

Following a shootout with police, one suspect was shot and a second surrendered, but only after a security guard, who had also exchanged gunfire with the men, was shot and injured. The third suspect, Knight, was caught without incident after a dramatic two-hour standoff at a nearby apartment building.

The security guard, Byron Reyes, was recovering Friday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. A hospital spokeswoman declined to release his condition or elaborate on his injuries.

Monica Chung, owner of the Central Valley Baazar where Reyes is employed, said Reyes suffered a single gunshot wound to his upper right thigh.

“I just visited him an hour ago and he’s doing fine,” Chung said in an interview Friday afternoon.