Firefighters Chase, Catch Rape Suspects and Free 2 Women

The only action the four firefighters had seen during their 24-hour shift was in a Don Johnson police movie. Then, in the last half an hour of their stint, they used an engine to chase a car, freed two women who said they had been raped and held the alleged assailants until sheriff’s deputies arrived.

About 7:30 a.m. a teen-ager working on a fire crew ran into Los Angeles County Fire Station 123 on Sand Canyon Road near Santa Clarita and said two women were screaming “rape” at a nearby campground, said Capt. Chuck Seder, who was in charge at the time.

Seder said he and the other firefighters jumped into a fire engine and a patrol truck and raced toward the campground.

“I was apprehensive, I must say,” Seder said. “Stepping into the middle of something like this without being police or having a gun--you’re not sure what will happen.”

There was no sign of the women and their alleged assailants at the campground, but the firefighters spotted a silver Honda Prelude driving west on Placerita Canyon Road that matched the description of the car the teen-ager had seen near the women.

Seder said the engine chased the car at about 50 m.p.h. with its red lights on. When the car finally pulled over, two men, who said they were Russian, and two women stepped out, he said.

“Everybody was talking all at once, and the women were hysterical,” Seder said.

The two men said they had picked up the women in a park in downtown Los Angeles for a night of partying, Deputy David Rawson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. Deputies arrived shortly after the firefighters stopped the car, he said.

During the confusion after the car pulled over, the men, whom police refused to identify, said they were afraid that the KGB--the Soviet Union’s secret police--would come after them because of the incident, Charles Powell, one of the firefighters, said.

The women, ages 18 and 32, said they had left the park and accompanied the men to a Van Nuys apartment, where they smoked marijuana, Rawson said. As the night progressed, the women were raped at knifepoint and then taken to the Santa Clarita Valley where the men threatened to kill them, according to their accounts, Rawson said.

“The women said their story was true, but no one would believe them because they were ‘poor, black women,’ ” Powell said the women told him.

Firefighters held the men without a struggle until deputies arrived moments later and arrested them, Seder said. They were being held Saturday at Van Nuys Jail on suspicion of rape and kidnaping.

In all, the rescue took about half an hour, and the firefighters got off duty shortly after the 8 a.m. shift arrived.

“It had been a dead night, except for that movie,” Powell said. “But the adrenaline sure got going in the morning.”