Musician Robbed in Break-In

Los Angeles police Thursday captured two men and are looking for a third who pistol-whipped and robbed the lead guitarist of the heavy-metal band Quiet Riot.

Carlos Cavazo, 40, was in his bathroom when an armed man walked in early Thursday, ordered him to the ground at gunpoint, slugged him with a pistol and tied his ankles and wrists with a phone cord, police said.

Cavazo was home alone at the house in the 4900 block of Kester Avenue at the time. One of the robbers dragged him into the hallway by his hair and took about $200 from his wallet, a gold earring and a bracelet, Cavazo said. Then the robber left Cavazo on the floor and joined two other men in ransacking the rest of the house.

The men seemed uninterested in the musician’s expensive guitars or the $50,000 Lamborghini Countach parked in the driveway, Cavazo said. “All they were asking for was money, drugs and guns,” Cavazo said. “I don’t have any of those things.”

As the robbers were occupied in other rooms, Cavazo said he untied himself and ran out the front door in his boxer shorts, flagging down a passing patrol car. The men fled the house the same way they entered, through a backdoor and an alley behind the house.

A short time later, police stopped a blue van and arrested the two men inside on suspicion of robbery.

Police said they found burglar tools in the van, but none of Cavazo’s property was recovered.

Cavazo said that in a police lineup, he identified one of the men in the van as the robber who pistol-whipped him.

The suspects are a 43-year-old Woodland Hills man and a 24-year-old Inglewood man, but their names were not made public to avoid tainting future lineups, said LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba. Detectives are trying to determine whether Thursday morning’s robbery is linked to similar crimes in recent weeks, Alba said.

On Tuesday, three robbers--whose descriptions fit those of the suspects who robbed Cavazo--took about $57,000 in two separate incidents.

In the first incident, two women, one the girlfriend of Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight, came home to their Woodland Hills residence and were confronted by a man armed with a semi-automatic pistol. The man, who seemed to know his way around their house, stole about $50,000 worth of jewelry and cash from the women.

An hour later and three miles away, two robbers, at least one of them armed, stole $7,000 from a man who was returning to his home in the 5000 block of Calderon Road. At the time police believed the two incidents were unrelated, but police are now reexamining all recent robberies for possible connections, Alba said.

Alba said he did not know if the robbery victims had been targeted, but Cavazo, who is headed for a brief concert tour of Mexico, said the robbers seemed eerily familiar with his home and asked him: “ ‘Don’t you think we know who you are?” ’

Quiet Riot’s popularity peaked in the mid-1980s, with songs such as “Bang Your Head” and “Feel The Noize.”