Girl Slain Trying to Recover Stolen Purse

A Saturday night date to a motorcycle race turned into a night of horror and death for a Santa Ana teen-ager when she and her boyfriend ended up lost in the streets near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after the event.

The couple were held up at knifepoint--for $2--and when they attempted to recover the girl’s stolen purse from an alley off South Menlo Avenue, the apparent robber shot Suzanne Mohr Coleman, 16, twice in the head. She died three hours later.

Miss Coleman, a junior at Fountain Valley High School, and her boyfriend, Christopher Barth, 18, of Fountain Valley, a senior at the same school, had spent two frightened hours searching for their car after they left the Super Bowl of Motocross at the Coliseum but could not figure out where they had parked it, Barth said. It was the first time they had been to the stadium, in Exposition Park near downtown Los Angeles.

“We were forced to park a few blocks away--the Coliseum lots were full,” said a distraught Barth Sunday afternoon. “When we got out, we were confused--we didn’t know where she had parked.”

They had parked the car south of the stadium but were looking for it on the west side, Los Angeles Police Department Detective Verne King said.

“We walked around for about two hours trying to find the car. Then we met a guy who said he would take us to our car,” Barth said. “He helped us out and kept all the people off our backs. He protected us.”

King identified the man as Robert Burgos, 25, of Los Angeles. Burgos lives in the area where the shooting occurred, King said.

Just as the trio had figured out where the car was, a man and a woman approached them, Barth said. The man had a knife. They took Coleman’s purse and fled on foot, he said.

“We called the police (from a nearby Winchell’s Donut shop, police said), then we waited for about five minutes,” Barth said. “They didn’t come. The guy who was with us disappeared into an alley, then he came back and told us to follow him and we’d get the purse back.

“We followed him into the alley, he argued with a guy on the roof. It was the same guy who approached us. They fired a shot at the guy we were with and missed. We turned around to run, and they shot her in the head.”

Miss Coleman was brought into the emergency room at California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles with two bullets in her head at about 2:30 a.m., nursing supervisor Naomi Marvin said. She died three hours later.

Barth and Miss Coleman had dated for about two years, Barth said. “I’m in shock still,” he said Sunday.

Barth said Miss Coleman had planned to go to college, but had not yet chosen a career path.

Barth described Miss Coleman’s assailant as about 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing 140 pounds, “with a medium Afro.”

Police said they have no suspects in the case so far.