Vehicle Halted After Teen Points Toy Gun at Officer

Southern California’s roadway violence nearly took a tragic turn as Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies drew their guns on a woman and her three children after her son pointed a toy pistol out of their car at a plainclothes detective on a Pomona Freeway off-ramp, authorities said Wednesday.

The incident was the second in two days in which officers spotted motorists waving toy weapons on county freeways.

Sheriff’s Detective Ralph Richards, 33, driving an unmarked car about 11 p.m. Tuesday, had stopped for a light at Atlantic Boulevard when he saw someone in a car behind him lean out the window and point what he thought was a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol at him, Sheriff’s Sgt. Lauona Shea said.

Richards accelerated through the red light into a parking lot and called for assistance from uniformed deputies, who stopped the car a few blocks away, Shea said.

Ordered Out

With guns drawn, deputies ordered occupants out of the car one by one with their hands behind their heads, Shea said. The driver, Rosie Kano; her two sons, 16 and 10, and a daughter, 11, then kneeled on the pavement while the deputies questioned them, she said.

Deputies released the family after a stern warning to Kano and her 16-year-old son, who had pointed the gun at Richards. The toy pistol and a toy Uzi submachine gun were returned to the children, Shea said.

“The boy is damn lucky no one was hurt,” Shea said.

“It’s a good thing the person in that car was a police officer,” she said. “Otherwise, a regular motorist would have been scared to death and might have slammed on the brakes or stepped on the gas and severely injured someone. Also, these days, a motorist might have pulled out another gun.

“I’m sure the family was freaked out, but just think how the officer felt when he looked over and saw the gun,” Shea said. “The kid really got off easy.”

No Law

In a second toy gun incident, an 18-year-old man in a car on the Harbor Freeway late Monday was detained after police caught him pointing a toy submachine gun at passing motorists. Police later released the unidentified man because there is no law that makes it illegal to carry toy weapons, police said.

In a traffic-related shooting Tuesday morning, three women were showered with glass when a gunshot shattered a window in their car, Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Linda Parker said.

Janet Patten, 43, of Cerritos, was driving northbound about 10:30 a.m. on Laguna Canyon Road near Forest Avenue in Laguna Beach when a shot was fired from a southbound dark-colored, compact car, Parker said. Patten told police that she saw the assailant’s car pull alongside her car just before the window shattered.

Neither Patten nor her two passengers were injured, Parker said.

“The preliminary investigation indicates that the weapon was possibly a BB or pellet gun,” Parker said.

Hearing Held

The recent rash of roadway shootings prompted the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday to hold a public hearing that it hopes will help it formulate ways to end the violence.

More than a dozen witnesses told the Police, Fire and Public Safety Committee that mandatory prison sentences, more police investigations and the adoption of polite driving habits by Southland motorists are necessary to combat the freeway shootings.

Acting Police Chief Robert Vernon told the committee that while there has been an increase in shootings, the problem actually began last year. There were 15 shootings in the last six months of 1986, Vernon said, compared to 26 shootings, including three deaths, in the first six months of 1987.

Vernon asked the council committee to allocate about $30,000 in overtime funds to bolster the Police Department’s fight against roadway violence.

Cause Accidents

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said people who brandish weapons, regardless of whether they actually use them, can cause traffic accidents and devastation.

“There are a lot of reckless SOBs out there on the roads,” Reiner said. “They must be sentenced to life for shooting on the freeways. That is the moral equivalent to attempted murder.”