Suspect Arrested in CHP Officer’s Death

Police arrested a Palm Springs man early Sunday in the slaying of a rookie California Highway Patrol officer who was shot seven times in a chilling confrontation in a brightly lit Fullerton parking lot in front of 35 stunned witnesses.

Don Burt, 25--the son of a CHP sergeant who pinned the badge on Burt’s chest when he became an officer last year--was trying to impound a BMW he had pulled over when the driver began arguing and shoving Burt shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday, witnesses told police.

The driver then pulled a 9-millimeter pistol and shot Burt six times at close range, knocking him to the ground. Then he walked closer, stood over the fallen officer and coolly fired again, sending a fatal bullet through his left eye, authorities said Sunday.

Horrified witnesses, many eating dinner at Coco’s Family Restaurant, watched the gunman climb into the CHP patrol car and speed off.

Fifteen minutes later, other witnesses saw him abandon the car, its lights still flashing, at a Ford dealership in Anaheim seven miles away, and sprint off into the night.

The suspect was arrested shortly thereafter, about a block away, said CHP Capt. Charles Lynd. On Sunday, the Fullerton Police Department identified him as Young Ho Choi, 33, of Palm Springs.

Between 10 p.m. and midnight, a steady parade of witnesses--some with officers and others by themselves--drove past, near the spot where the suspect had been arrested, to identify him. Several times police pulled him from the back of a police car, stood him up in front of an auto repair shop and shone a spotlight from a police car on him.

Several witnesses identified him as the shooter, a CHP captain said.

Burt, of north Orange County, had been a CHP officer since April 1995. His wife, Kristin, is 6 1/2 months pregnant with their first child. Burt’s father, also named Don, is a CHP sergeant in Riverside.

“He just decided to be what his dad was,” the senior Burt said Sunday. “I had reservations, but I never told him. I know how the times are; they’re getting worse. It’s not like when I started.”

“There’s no respect for the law anymore,” the elder Burt continued. “You stop someone for a ticket and they kill you in the blink of an eye.”

The incident began about 8:30 p.m. on the Orange Freeway, when Burt signaled for a leased white 1995 BMW to pull over, Lynd said. The driver left the freeway at Nutwood Avenue and drove into the large parking lot shared by Coco’s, a Chevron gas station and a motel.

A few minutes later, Burt called in a license check on the driver, Lynd said. At that point, it appeared to be a routine traffic stop, as the computer reported the driver had a suspended license and Burt, following procedure, called a tow truck to impound the car.

Authorities would not disclose why Burt pulled over the BMW in the first place. A Fullerton police officer who happened past the scene signaled Burt, asking whether he needed help, but Burt waved him on.

While waiting for the tow truck, Burt began searching the BMW and apparently discovered some “forged or counterfeit” travelers’ checks in the trunk, Lynd said. Witnesses saw the motorist confront Burt. Then they saw the two scuffle. They saw the flash of a gun.

One witness, who declined to be identified fearing retribution, looked up to see Burt crumple to the ground. Dumbstruck, he watched the man stand near Burt and fire repeatedly.

“People started screaming and ducking,” the witness said. “I was pretty much standing there in shock. I couldn’t believe it. I was scared.”

A woman watching from her motel balcony window began screaming hysterically as the shots were fired, yelling loudly for help, shouting, “What are you doing?” at the gunman, said Joanne DeVries, who was in the room next door.

The gunman then crouched down and appeared to take something from Burt, possibly his service pistol. Lynd said Burt’s weapon and the 9-millimeter pistol were not found as of Sunday. Investigators had initially thought Burt might have been shot with his own weapon.

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Before he fled, the gunman, frantic and agitated, rummaged through a stack of papers Burt had taken from the car’s trunk and put on the hood of his patrol car. He grabbed some and swept others to the ground.

“He looked distraught, like he didn’t know what to do, like, ‘Oh my God, what have I done,’ ” the witness said. “We were like, ‘What’s this guy thinking, taking off in the officer’s vehicle?’ ”

That is the question asked by more than two dozen officers who cordoned off an area two miles from Disneyland, where Burt’s car was later found.

“We wondered why he just didn’t take his own car,” said Anaheim Police Lt. Tom O’Donnell.

After the suspect was in custody, Orange County sheriff’s bloodhounds picked up the gunman’s scent and led officers to a gas station, a doughnut shop and billiard parlor. Then, the dogs led deputies through a gas station, to a bowling alley, and next door to a large apartment complex. At that point, the dog search stopped. While police were satisfied the suspect was not in the area, they kept scouring it for the missing guns.

The shooting ended an almost storybook life. Young Don Burt was a three-sport varsity letterman at Perris High School in Riverside County, excelling in soccer, water polo and swimming. He was student body president his senior year.

He had wanted to be a high school teacher, said his father, who pinned the CHP badge on his son last year when he was graduated from the academy. Burt, 52, a CHP officer since 1969, said he rarely worried about his own safety, but always fretted about his son. “You worry about your kids. I worried about him all the time.”

To those who knew Don and Kristin Burt, they were, in their three-year marriage, the proverbial perfect couple.

“He was very much in love with his wife and she loved him,” said a friend in Whittier, David McPhillips. “I was there the day they found out they were having a baby. She was just glowing. And he was just so happy about it, really excited. They had the kind of relationship that everything wishes they had.”

With his father in the CHP and her father and brother in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, both of them “knew something like this could happen” said McPhillips, his eyes brimming with tears.

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Sunday afternoon, a somber Kristin Burt said that she, her niece and two nephews had met Burt and another CHP officer for dinner only hours before the shooting, in the same parking lot where he was killed.

“We had a really good time,” said Kristin Burt. “He laughed with the kids. They were calling him ‘onky-donkey’ instead of Uncle Donny.

“Then he kissed me goodbye and told me he loved me and hoped he’d get home in time to be with me and the kids.”

But as soon as she returned home, Kristin Burt saw the officer they had dined with searching for her condo. He took her to the UCI Medical Center, where her husband had died shortly after the shooting.

“The first thing I told the surgeon and the coroner was that I absolutely had to see him,” Kristin Burt said. “I was shaking all over until I got to see him, then I stopped. I got to hold his hand and kiss him and tell him that I loved him and that I would take care of our baby.”

She went home, put on one her husband’s T-shirts and hugged a “pregnant” teddy bear, a gift from him to celebrate her pregnancy.

“I lost my best friend and the father of my baby,” she said. “It makes it really hard for me to be happy now about the baby. This is what he wanted more than anything else in the world. I never thought I’d have to tell my baby stories about its daddy.”