O.C. Deputy Shot During Gunfight

An Orange County sheriff’s sergeant was shot in the face at point-blank range during a gun battle at a Lake Forest strip mall Saturday morning, prompting a massive manhunt and the arrest of two reputed Santa Ana gang members.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Kurt Vasentine, 45, was wounded while checking out a suspicious car parked in an alley at the Lake Forest Market Place, next to the Santa Ana Freeway, said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. A .380-caliber bullet hit Vasentine in the right cheek, traveled down his neck and lodged under his right collarbone.

During the gun battle, Vasentine wounded his assailant, who was arrested when he checked himself into a hospital in Riverside, police said. Police cordoned off the strip mall and closed Interstate 5 between Alicia Parkway and Lake Forest Drive for more than an hour, backing up traffic for miles.

Vasentine, a 23-year veteran, was listed in fair condition at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, where he was being visited by his girlfriend, friends and colleagues.

“He’s incredibly fortunate that the bullet didn’t ... destroy vital organs,” said Wayne Quint, president of the Assn. of Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies. “The most important thing ... was his will to survive....The average person would just lay down. He got up and took action; he fought back.”

According to police, Vasentine was patrolling the area about 8 a.m. when he saw a white Nissan Altima parked in a secluded area of the strip mall behind a building that houses several businesses, including a Starbucks coffee shop, a Bank of America branch, a Staples store and a jewelry store.

A slender young man was inside the car with the seats reclined. When Vasentine approached the car, the driver jumped out and tried to run, Amormino said.

Vasentine did not know it at the time, but the white Nissan had been stolen earlier in Tustin.

Vasentine grabbed the suspect and the two wrestled. During the tussle, the man reached into his right pocket, Amormino said, pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and fired it into Vasentine’s face.

The wounded officer stumbled back, grabbed his weapon and traded several shots with the gunman, who was hit in his right thigh.

The bleeding suspect ran away. According to witnesses, he jumped over a wall into a parking lot and waved frantically to an alleged accomplice driving a black Toyota Avalon, Amormino said. Vasentine got on his radio and called for help.

The two suspects fled the scene minutes before a swarm of patrol cars descended on the strip mall.

“I heard a couple of pops,” said a witness who declined to give his name. “It was like fire crackers, but they kept going on and on and I thought, ‘Wow! Those aren’t firecrackers, those are gunshots....’ There were maybe about 12 shots.”

Edwin Cathey, a sales manager at Staples, said he heard what may have been gunshots but dismissed it at first. When he went to the back of his store to unload some merchandise, he saw several patrol cars and the wounded Vasentine sitting against a wall, surrounded by other officers.

“He was bleeding pretty badly,” Cathey said. “It was a scary scene.”

Amormino said the getaway car had been carjacked from a Santa Ana man earlier Saturday.

“They were obviously planning something,” he said, possibly a robbery of one of the mall’s businesses.

About seven hours after the shootout, Riverside sheriff’s deputies detained a 16-year-old boy who checked himself into Riverside Community Hospital with a gunshot wound to his leg. Hospital staff called Riverside Sheriffs, who alerted the Orange County authorities.

The teen’s 20-year-old brother, identified as Miguel Valdivinos, was arrested about the same time in Santa Ana, after police spotted him driving the getaway car. Valdivinos led police on a brief car chase and then tried to escape on foot before he was apprehended.

Both are reputed Santa Ana street gang members with extensive criminal records and are being held on suspicion of attempted murder of a police officer, Amormino said. At the Lake Forest substation where Vasentine works, fellow Sgt. Rich White said Vasentine has a reputation for vigilance.

In 1998, he was commended for arresting a suspected car thief. Vasentine spotted the suspect in a stolen car three hours after dispatchers radioed a description of the vehicle, White said. “He much prefers going out there and arresting crooks to anything else.”

Lake Forest has been the scene of two fatal shootings of deputies in the last decade.

Deputy Brad Riches was gunned down June 12, 1999, outside a convenience store by a man wielding an assault rifle. Maurice Gerald Steskal, an unemployed laborer, was arrested and charged with Riches’ slaying. And on Christmas Day 1993, Deputy Darryn L. Robins was fatally shot by his patrol partner during an informal training exercise behind a movie theater. A grand jury rejected calls from local prosecutors to indict Robins’ partner, Brian J. Scanlan, for the shooting.

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Times photographer Don Kelsen and staff writers Steve Marble and Kris Lindgren contributed to this report.