SIS Officers Involved in Shootout : Crime: Members of controversial L.A. unit witness robbery in Ventura County. One suspect is killed. Two policemen are hurt.

Cruising for a target, two robbery suspects pulled up to a Ventura County liquor store Monday night, apparently unaware that 13 members of a heavily armed, elite Los Angeles police squad were shadowing them in undercover cars.

Police watched the pair park their small white car on a dark side street, tug bandannas over their mouths, draw pistols and barge into the South West Liquor & Deli in Newbury Park.

Stock clerk Julio Recinos said the pair grabbed his hair, shoved his head onto the counter and forced the cashier to empty the till. But only after the suspects grabbed cigarette cartons and sprinted nearly 100 yards back to their car did police move in, Ventura County sheriff’s deputies said.

Then began a ferocious gun battle in which one suspect was killed, the other was left fighting for his life, and two detectives from LAPD’s controversial Special Investigations Section (SIS) were badly wounded, police said.

Daniel Soly, 27, of West Hills died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head, said James Baroni, Ventura County coroner’s autopsy assistant.

Robert Cunningham, 26, of Reseda, Soly’s alleged accomplice, was listed in critical condition in the intensive care unit of St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, an official there said. He suffered four gunshot wounds.

Two SIS detectives, whom LAPD officials refused to identify, were listed in serious but stable condition at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

One, a 40-year-old man, underwent surgery for a bullet that hit his abdomen below his bulletproof vest, tore through his bladder and went out through his back, hospital spokeswoman Kris Carraway said.

The other, a 49-year-old man, underwent surgery to remove shrapnel that pierced his abdomen after a bullet splattered against his vest, she said.

LAPD Chief Willie L. Williams visited the officers and then toured the crime scene Tuesday just after midnight, where technicians began collecting shell casings and other evidence from around the suspects’ bullet-riddled car.

“Both our officers are in real good shape,” Williams told reporters. “I talked with one, and he was in good spirits. He said he was ready to get up and leave the hospital, but I told him to take it easy. . . . Both men were very, very lucky.”

As Ventura County sheriff’s detectives began investigating the shootout, Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Holmes said his office might file murder charges against Cunningham for his role in the events that led to Soly’s death.

Soly was at the wheel when the shooting began, but it is not clear whether he drew his gun or pointed it at the officers before he was shot, Ventura County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Robertson said.

SIS officers have told investigators that Cunningham popped up through the sunroof to shoot at them with a .357 magnum before they returned fire, he said.

“We know that several shots were fired over a period of about 20 seconds,” he said. But it is not clear yet who shot whom, he said.

SIS officers have long been criticized for their tactic of watching violent crimes occur before making an arrest.

A 1988 investigation by The Times found that the 19-member unit often followed violent criminals, but did not take advantage of opportunities to arrest them until after robberies or burglaries occurred--in many cases leaving victims terrorized or injured.

The LAPD lost a 1992 civil suit in which a federal jury found that SIS members had wrongfully shot three robbers to death after they held up a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland in 1990. The court ordered the police to pay more than $44,000 in damages from their own pockets to the dead men’s families.

The owner of the store robbed Monday night had only praise for the squad’s decision to wait to move in until after the crime. “They did the right job,” said Hakam Barakat, the store’s owner.

Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter said he was not perturbed that the officers failed to tell his department that they were working in the Thousand Oaks area or that they waited to move in until after the clerk was robbed.

Times staff writer Dwayne Bray and correspondents Ira E. Stoll and Andrew Blechman contributed to this report.