Kidnapped Man Injured as Crash Ejects Him From Car

A 30-year-old businessman remained in critical condition Tuesday after he apparently was kidnapped from his Woodland Hills home by two assailants who fled in his Bentley and led police on a high-speed chase that ended in a fiery crash.

Christopher Rawlings, 30, was ejected from the trunk of his luxury car late Monday as it struck a power pole, police said.

Rawlings’ kidnappers fled on foot and escaped police, aided by a blackout that resulted from a power transformer disablement in the crash. They remained at large Tuesday evening.

Rawlings, a father of two young girls, was unconscious and listed in critical condition with severe head injuries at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. Dozens of friends and family members gathered at the hospital throughout the day and consoled his wife, Barbie.

On Monday, his 30th birthday, Rawlings drove his Bentley to a nearby grocery store to buy diapers and baby formula, police said.

About half an hour later, his wife heard the garage door open. When Rawlings didn’t come in, police said, she went to see why and observed two masked men beating him.

She shut the door to the garage, rounded up her two children and ran to the roof of the house. From there she called 911 on a cell phone.

As police arrived, the Bentley sped from the garage. Two officers went in the house and two others followed the car onto the Ventura Freeway.

The Bentley, driven by one of the kidnappers, got off the freeway at Tampa Avenue and collided with a Chevrolet Cavalier, careening into a power pole and catching fire. The driver of the Chevrolet suffered minor injuries.

“First you saw a flash of backwards lightning shooting up the pole. Then you saw the transformer just blow, shooting sparks all over the place,” said Tom Ropiak, a witness.

The wreckage wound up in Eldy Cohen’s front yard.

“It’s crazy that it happens right in your front yard,” said the Israeli immigrant, who has lived the past 12 years in the United States. “That’s the sad part of living in L.A.”

Both kidnappers fled into the darkness. Police searched with dogs and helicopters into the early morning. One kidnapper apparently carjacked a Mazda nearby. The car was recovered on the Foothill Freeway.

Rawlings graduated from Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, where he played football and ran track. In 1986, the year before he graduated, he helped lead the team to a divisional championship.

Bill Redell, Rawlings’ coach at Crespi, said he ran into his former student over the Christmas holidays. Rawlings told him he was part owner of the Gentleman’s Quarters clothing store on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. The store was closed during business hours Tuesday, and other friends said they thought Rawlings was an investor.

The family lives in a neighborhood of half-million-dollar homes. Bentleys like the one Rawlings drove cost more than $200,000.

In Rawlings’ neighborhood, where Suburbans and BMWs were parked in driveways and several doors were answered by maids Tuesday, neighbors were upset by the crime.

Judy Hoffman, who for 14 years has lived a block away in a house surrounded by a tall fence, said: “We’re probably the most secure [house] in the neighborhood. But if someone wants to follow you, they will.”

Said another neighbor: “You just never would expect in this neighborhood that anything this horrible would happen.”

The man, who did not want his name used, said Rawlings was “very friendly” and often took walks with his children.

At the hospital, several relatives congregated in the waiting room of the intensive care unit. Among them were Rawlings’ sister, mother and wife. They kept watch over a toddler playing with a “Be My Valentine” balloon.

Rawlings’ sister seemed hopeful that her brother would pull through. All his life, she told a loved one over the phone at the hospital, he has succeeded.

Staff writers Andrew Blankstein and Eric Sondheimer contributed to this story.