Slain Man’s Girlfriend Denies He Lunged Toward Deputies’ Guns : Shooting: She says he was entering home. Sheriff’s official insists ‘suspect had partial control’ of weapon.

The way the Sheriff’s Department tells it, deputies shot and killed a 25-year-old carpet cleaner because he lunged for their guns, because he appeared armed and because he fit the description of a gunman in a Compton bar shooting earlier that evening.

But the shooting suspect was a black teen-ager. Jesus Vargas was Latino and several years older. Once sprawled on the ground with a bullet in his chest, Vargas proved unarmed.

And Vargas’ girlfriend says he was entering his own house in Rancho Dominguez late Sunday, not lunging toward deputies’ guns, when he was shot.

Vargas, who came to this country eight years ago from the Mexican state of Michoacan, died on a patch of earth a few feet from his own front door. On Wednesday, the spot was marked by a cross of ashes, along with four novena candles and some bougainvillea sprigs.

He “had no weapons, there was no confrontation with the law, he had no drugs and he was peacefully on his own property when deputies apparently came on the property seeking somebody else,” said Luis A. Carrillo, an attorney representing the girlfriend, Alejandra Valencia.

Sheriff’s spokesmen concede that Vargas did not match the bar suspect’s description and was not carrying a weapon, but say they are not ready to accept culpability.

“We won’t know until the investigation is completed whether the shooting was justified,” Deputy Fidel Gonzales, a spokesman for the department, said Wednesday. “The suspect had partial control of [a deputy’s] gun. He was armed.”

According to Sheriff’s Lt. Ray Peavy, Deputies Kevin Keef, 27, and Marc King, 30, stopped on Butler Avenue about 11:35 Sunday night because three men, standing around a reddish-orange car, matched the description of suspects in the Compton shooting.

Vargas, who had been leaning into the driver’s side of the car, straightened up, showing one hand covered with a rag, said Peavy. The deputies thought they saw metal glinting under the rag, he said. But before the officers could react, Vargas went to the car’s trunk, took out a black plastic bag and ran for a nearby house, he said.

The deputies saw the man drop the bag in the yard, then run alongside the house toward the rear, Peavy said. Keef and King chased Vargas to a smaller house in back.

Keef found Vargas hiding behind the small house, where Vargas lived with Valencia, their 5-year-old son and other members of Valencia’s family, Peavy said. Keef yelled at Vargas to come out, Peavy said.

“The suspect was yelling at Deputy Keef in Spanish. Keef was yelling back in English,” Peavy said. “Keef doesn’t speak Spanish and the guy [Vargas] might not have understood him. I don’t know.”

According to Peavy, Vargas then lunged at Keef’s gun, the two men struggled and Keef fired. Then King fired, apparently striking Vargas in the chest, and Vargas fell.

Officers later retrieved the plastic bag and found a six-inch pellet gun inside, Peavy said.

Valencia said that she, Vargas and her son, Alejandro, had just returned from running errands in Santa Ana, and that she had gone into the house to put some milk in their refrigerator.

She said she heard a commotion outside the front door and saw one officer holding Vargas by the arm and another aiming a gun at him. Vargas kept asking in Spanish, “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Valencia said.

Then an officer fired at Vargas, she said, and her boyfriend fell to the ground. Valencia said that she screamed at the officers to leave Vargas alone but that one officer pushed her inside and closed the door. A while later, she said, she heard another shot, looked out the window and saw her boyfriend on the ground, spitting up blood.

A coroner’s spokesman, who identified the dead man as Carlos Jose Gaitain, said the cause of death had been determined to be a shot in the chest. Valencia said her boyfriend, who was illegally in this country, had used various names for employment purposes. His name was Vargas, not Gaitain, she said.

Sheriff’s officials were unsure why Keef and King thought of Vargas as a suspect in the earlier shooting in Compton.

“The deputies may have assumed that the suspects were Hispanic because the shooting occurred at a Hispanic bar,” Peavy said.

Luis Medina, the owner of El Molino Rojo, the Compton tavern where the first shooting took place, said he told passing sheriff’s deputies--Keef and King--that it had been a lone “black guy” who fired a shot into the bar, then drove away with two other African Americans. He also said the gunman had been in a brownish 1986 Oldsmobile.

A spokeswoman said the district attorney’s office is probing Vargas’ death, as it does all shootings by officers. King and Keef have been reassigned to desk duty for five days and scheduled for counseling, which Peavy said is routine in deputy-involved shooting deaths. Also, the consul general of Mexico is taking an interest in the case, according to a letter from that office.