Long Beach Officer Critical After Being Shot in the Head : Violence: Four suspects are in custody in city’s most serious police shooting in 16 years. Victim was in his parked patrol car when a man walked up and fired several times.

A Long Beach police officer was in critical condition late Friday after he was shot three times during a routine arrest, police said. Witnesses said that the gunman appeared to be wearing a “Cop Killer” T-shirt that alluded to the controversial song by Ice-T.

The officer, Abel Dominguez, 31, underwent two hours of surgery after one bullet struck the right side of his head, authorities said. Dominguez had taken a suspect into custody and was operating a computer console inside his patrol car when an apparent passerby walked up from behind the car, drew a handgun and fired several shots through the rear windshield, police said.

Dominguez, a five-year veteran of the Long Beach Police Department with three young children, was working his regular beat in a low-income, drug-plagued area of the city when the shooting occurred about 1:50 p.m. on 49th Street near Grisham Avenue, police spokesmen said. By late Friday, police had taken at least four suspects into custody and detained at least seven people as possible witnesses, said Officer Margarita DeWitt.

Three teen-age witnesses who took cover when gunfire broke out said the assailant, a black man with short-cropped hair, wore a black T-shirt printed with concentric circles of a target or gun sight and an officer. The design resembles the cover of the Ice-T album “Body Count,” featuring the controversial song “Cop Killer,” they said. But police said they could not confirm that description from their interviews with many other witnesses.

Police released no other description of the attacker.

A 17-year-old said he and a friend saw the assailant flee, then watched the disoriented officer drive about 10 feet into a wall before they could rush to the window to check on his condition.

“He was dazed--I don’t think he knew where he was,” the witness said. “We were asking: ‘Are you OK?’ He wouldn’t answer.”

The shooting was the most serious attack against a Long Beach police officer since the 1975 slaying of Officer Robert Ray Birdsall, who was shot to death during a nighttime search for a kidnaping suspect in Signal Hill. “We’ve had accidents and things, but nothing of this magnitude,” DeWitt said.

Dominguez, whom colleagues describe as a quiet, easygoing family man, was rushed to Long Beach Memorial Medical Center after a resident reported the shooting. Doctors removed some bullet fragments from near his right temple but other fragments remain in his skull. Dominguez also had been shot in the right forearm and in the chest, but a bulletproof vest apparently protected him, said Dr. Barry Ceverha, the neurosurgeon who supervised the operation.

“He can breathe on his own,” Ceverha said after the officer’s wife, Cindy, arrived at the hospital. “He is on life support and we have given him muscle relaxants so his brain doesn’t swell. We put him in a medically induced coma to preserve brain function. He does have brain function.”

Ceverha said it was possible that Dominguez might survive the attack, but cautioned that brain swelling could require further surgery. The doctor said it was unknown whether the injury could cause paralysis or other problems.

Police cordoned off about eight blocks of the city, only a short distance from the exclusive Virginia Country Club, in a massive search for suspects and witnesses. Nearly 100 officers were involved, including SWAT teams, helicopter and canine units and investigators from nearby cities such as Signal Hill and Compton. Officers were conducting door-to-door interviews and searching for the weapon.

“We’re searching trash cans, laundry rooms--any place a person can hide a gun,” Long Beach Detective Bob Anderson said. “We may even have the shooter, but we feel there (are) more suspects around.”

Residents said the area, a mix of apartment buildings and small homes in North Long Beach, has been marred by drug dealing and frequent drive-by shootings, even though some improvement has resulted from extensive police patrols.

“It’s like the Fourth of July every night,” resident Mary Lou Ramirez said of the frequent gunfire. She said she has boarded her windows out of fear of stray bullets.

The shooting occurred less than six months after two Compton police officers were slain by gunfire. Since 1985, at least 23 police officers in Los Angeles County have been killed by gunfire in the line of duty.

Long Beach Police Department has set up a toll-free number for anyone with information about the attack: (800) 930-4000.

Times staff writers David Ferrell and Duke Helfand contributed to this story.