Off-Duty Officer Shot; Girlfriend Kidnapped

An off-duty Los Angeles police officer who had taken his 4-year-old son to visit his girlfriend and her children in Corona was shot in the head Sunday by the woman’s estranged husband, who then kidnapped her as the children watched, police said.

Late Sunday, police were still searching for Curtis Hemphill, 30, who was last seen forcing the mother of his children, Keri Hemphill, 25, into a red Cadillac outside the apartment complex where she had been living for the past month.

Corona Police Sgt. Neil Henderson said two men who saw the woman struggling with her husband in the car tried at one point to intercede, but lost the couple when the Cadillac pulled onto Interstate 15 and sped north.

LAPD motorcycle officer Vernon Ward, 31, was in critical condition at Riverside General Hospital-UC Riverside Medical Center with a bullet wound in the center of his forehead. Ward, a 5 1/2-year veteran of the LAPD, underwent surgery Sunday evening, and several fragments were removed from his brain, Henderson said.

Henderson said the attack occurred about 12:30 p.m. Sunday outside Keri Hemphill’s apartment in the 1800 block of Hideaway Place. Neighbors told police that they had heard a gunshot and looked outside and saw Ward lying on the sidewalk.

Among the eyewitnesses, they said, were Ward’s son and the two Hemphill children, ages 2 and 3, who identified the assailant as their father.

Inside the apartment, neighbors told police, they could see an armed man struggle with a woman, then force her into a red 1995 Cadillac with the California license plate 3 NON 850.

Henderson said that as the car pulled out onto a nearby street, the two men noticed the woman trying to climb out, only to be pulled back by the man. When the car stopped at a red light, he said, two men ran up to see whether the woman needed help, but the car sped away.

“They lost them on the I-15 freeway, heading northbound,” Henderson said.

Corona police had little information on the attack, partly because Keri Hemphill had lived in their jurisdiction only for a few weeks. Her last known address before that was with Curtis Hemphill in Riverside.

Henderson said it was unclear whether the Hemphills were divorced or merely separated. Witnesses told police she had been dating Ward, he said.

Detectives asked the public to notify them immediately if they spot the suspect, who is considered armed and dangerous. Curtis Hemphill is described as black, about 5 feet 10 and 180 pounds, with hair styled in a curl. He was last seen wearing a thigh-length black jacket, white shirt and black pants.

Keri Hemphill was described as a 5-foot-3, 125-pound white woman with very long brown hair.