Man Slain in Laguna Alley : Residents Shaken as Traffic Quarrel Results in City’s 2nd Killing of Year

Residents of this idyllic beachfront community struggled Sunday to come to grips with the second brutal slaying in their midst this year, after a traffic dispute on Laguna Canyon Road late Saturday ended in an alleyway shooting of a local artist and skateboarder.

Three suspects, including a 19-year-old believed to be the gunman, were detained for questioning Sunday in connection with the slaying of 26-year-old Loren J. Chadwick, who was gunned down just 300 feet from an ice cream parlor where the owner was shot and killed during a February robbery that shocked local residents.

Chadwick collapsed at the top of a wooden stairway in a narrow alley off Broadway about 10:30 p.m. Saturday, shot at least twice as he tried to flee assailants he did not know, police said.

“He was a beautiful surfer; he was an artist,” said his mother, Sandra Chadwick, a 49-year-old Laguna Beach artist who visited the scene of her son’s death Sunday afternoon. As she spoke, about a dozen of her son’s friends gathered around, placing flowers among the gauze and sterilized pads strewn about a bloodstained patch of asphalt.

But Sandra Chadwick and others also hinted that Chadwick was protective of his friends and quick to rise to a confrontation. “He wasn’t intimidated by anybody, nothing frightened him,” she said.

The confrontation in downtown Laguna Beach was one of the final acts in a traffic altercation that apparently began near the intersection of the San Diego Freeway and Laguna Canyon Road as Chadwick and three friends were returning home from a music store in Irvine.

The white car in which Chadwick was a passenger apparently cut in front of another white car while the two were merging onto Laguna Canyon Road, police said. With that perceived provocation--an everyday occurrence on Southern California freeways--tempers flared beyond reason.

Along Laguna Canyon Road, on their way south toward the beach, the two cars--each carrying four or five young adults--passed one another repeatedly, and the occupants exchanged hostile words and gestures, said Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr.

Once the vehicles arrived in downtown Laguna, in the 300 block of Broadway, the other white car pulled in front of the car in which Chadwick was a passenger and suddenly stopped, police said. Then a third car, a black BMW, pulled up and “boxed in” the Chadwick vehicle from behind.

At that point, Chadwick reportedly jumped out to confront the suspects. “Loren is the one who said, ‘I’m not going to take this,’ and jumped out of the car,” said Sandra Chadwick, relaying what witnesses and police had told her.

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Young men emerged from all three vehicles and began to scuffle, police said. Then one of the occupants of the BMW pulled out a weapon, and someone shouted, “He’s got a gun!”

Chadwick and his companions fled in all directions--Chadwick choosing the alley off Broadway. The gunman walked fast toward the alley, “calmly took aim and started firing” about four rounds, Purcell said, hitting Chadwick at least twice.

One bullet passed through Chadwick’s hand, the other entered his heart, Purcell said. Still, Chadwick was able to run another 50 feet, climbing up a short flight of blue stairs anchored to an apartment building and hidden behind an overgrown pomegranate bush.

Residents who live in the hillside apartments overlooking the alleyway said they came to their windows after hearing the shots, then watched a heart-rending sequence of events, in which police and friends spent at least 14 minutes searching the scene for Chadwick, then, upon finding him, working nearly an hour trying to revive him.

“I heard a big pop at about 10:30,” said Rita Jackson, 76, who watched the gruesome scene from her second-story patio. “It’s just horrendous. I’ve lived in Laguna Beach for 25 years and that’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this.”

Jackson said she saw a shadowy figure carrying a gun flee the scene, then watched a group of young men wander into the alley a few minutes later. Those men included two 20-year-old friends of Chadwick--one who was a passenger in the car with Chadwick, and another who happened to be walking along Broadway and witnessed the scuffle. Fearing retribution from a killer who remains at large, they asked that their names not be revealed.

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Surrounded by police officers who arrived within minutes, the two called for their friend and whistled for him--using a signal they had devised as teen-agers to find each other in a crowd.

“We couldn’t get him to answer,” one said. “I just figured he had gotten away.”

One of the two, who didn’t learn of Chadwick’s death until the next day, described his friend as loyal and fun-loving. “We would just hang out and do kid stuff,” he said. “He loved skateboarding.”

Some witnesses said it took up to 40 minutes before police finally found Chadwick’s body at the top of the stairway, but Purcell said the search lasted just 14 minutes. “Even if a surgical team had been there at the time he was shot, there was no hope you could save him,” said Purcell, citing an autopsy report that showed irreparable damage to Chadwick’s heart.

Police still were trying to piece together the sequence of events and the relationships among those traveling in the BMW and the car that boxed in the shooting victim’s vehicle from the front. Purcell said he did not know when the BMW became involved in the confrontation, but he added that “our investigation is starting to show there was a tie-in between the two cars.”

Acting on vehicle registration information, Laguna Beach detectives went to a location in Downey about 9:15 p.m. Sunday to arrest Dzevad Joe Dakas of Rubidoux, Calif.

Laguna Beach Police Officer Hector Pantoja said investigators believe that Dakas was the person who shot Chadwick. Pantoja declined to elaborate.

Police would not identify the first two suspects taken into custody, though Purcell said they are residents of Downey who were apprehended “outside Orange County.” The identities of the other occupants in Chadwick’s car--two of whom are believed to be women--were not disclosed either.

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The shooting of Chadwick, a former Laguna Beach High School student, was viewed by some residents as new evidence that their city’s serene lifestyle is being jeopardized.

In February, residents were horrified when the kindly, middle-aged couple who ran the Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Shop at 247 Broadway were shot by a robber. Simindokht Roshdieh, 52, died and her husband, Firooz Roshdieh, was seriously injured after the couple refused to hand over the money in their cash register.

In the days after the shootings, shocked residents and merchants placed bright bouquets of flowers before the locked doors of the ice cream parlor with notes expressing their sorrow. The coldness of the crime stunned the city, which had not had a robbery-homicide in 27 years.

The day after the slaying, the City Council began searching the town’s shrinking budget for money to hire more police officers and posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Residents got a dose of good news last month when police announced major crime had dipped 16% in the first eight months of 1995 as compared to the same period the previous year. Police were especially encouraged because major crimes--rapes, robberies, homicides and aggravated assaults--had fallen 17% in 1994 compared to 1993.

But the town soon afterward received another jolt, when a 30-year-old pedestrian was struck on Coast Highway by as many as three cars as she crossed in heavy traffic. As she lay critically injured, all three vehicles left the scene before police arrived.

The series of tragedies has left many residents wondering whether their city is slowly being overtaken by the kind of ugly violence commonly associated with gang-infested inner cities.

“The murder-robbery [at Baskin-Robbins] was more like a fluke,” said Nadine Connor, 36, who manages a thrift store on Broadway. “This [latest killing] makes it feel like it’s here now. The city is filtering in.”

Purcell, who said investigators are working on the case around the clock, acknowledged the changing mood in the city.

“We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve not had to experience these types of violent crimes,” he said. “It’s unnerving.”