Man Held in Assault on Couple, Carjacking

Police arrested a 22-year-old man shortly after a carjacking and brutal attack on a couple in Sherman Oaks, the second such incident to occur on the same block in as many months.

Joseph Navar Downey was being held in the Monday night assault of a man and a woman that began in a parking lot on a block crowded with restaurants and other businesses, police said.

The incident began around 9:30 p.m. when a man approached the couple as they sat in a four-door car in the parking lot of a convenience store in the 13900 block of Ventura Boulevard, said LAPD spokesman Lt. Anthony Alba.

The man threatened the couple with a handgun and forced his way into their car. He then ordered them to drive around the Sherman Oaks area, Alba said.

As they drove, Alba said, the gunman pistol-whipped the man. They ended up in the parking lot of a Home Savings of America branch, where the woman was sexually assaulted.

Alba said the gunman ordered the man to withdraw money from an automated teller machine. While in line for the ATM, he alerted another bank customer that he was being robbed, Alba said. The witness called the police.

After robbing the victims of money and jewelry, the gunman fled on foot.

Downey, described as a 6-foot-1, 310-pound African American, was arrested a few blocks away about 10 p.m. and was booked on suspicion of kidnapping for the purpose of robbery and sex. He is being held at Van Nuys Jail in lieu of $1 million bail, authorities said.

Alba said police are now investigating the possibility that Downey participated in a similar attack in February that started in the parking lot of The Ventura, a private banquet hall in the same Ventura Boulevard block as the convenience store and the Home Savings branch.

In the February assault, a Covina couple parked behind the banquet hall were carjacked by two men, one of whom was armed with a semiautomatic handgun, police said. As in Monday night’s attack, the woman was raped, her husband was beaten, and both were driven to a bank where the attackers told the victims to withdraw money from an automated teller machine.

In that incident, the attackers escaped after being dropped off next to a car driven by a third man, police said.

The Covina couple described the man with the handgun as an African American, between 20 and 25 years old, weighing about 200 pounds. The second attacker was described as an African American, about 18 years old and weighing about 130 pounds.

Alba said investigators suspect that Downey is the man described--perhaps inaccurately--by the first couple as weighing 200 pounds.

The assaults have left businesspeople on the busy Sherman Oaks block feeling vulnerable and looking for answers.

“I think maybe it’s time we have some more lights and maybe some surveillance cameras in the areas around here,” said Eugene Winnik, owner of Casual Couture.

Yakari Fujii, who works at a restaurant on the block, said the attacks seemed particularly brazen--and therefore more frightening--because the area is usually full of shoppers and diners at night. “It’s surprising someone would try such a thing at a time when so many people are around,” she said. “It makes me feel scared, and I know a lot of other people who work around here feel that way too.”