2 Kidnapping Suspects Shot to Death by Police

Two kidnapping suspects who were on their way to pick up a ransom were shot to death Wednesday after they fired at Los Angeles Police Department detectives who had surrounded their van and were about to arrest them, investigators said.

While investigators closed in on the van, the kidnapping victim who was being held in a nearby apartment escaped and ran into the street just as police arrived to rescue him, said LAPD Cmdr. Tim McBride. Police arrested two men and a woman at the apartment and later booked them on suspicion of kidnapping. The victim, Pablo Vasquez, 29, was uninjured.

Sunday night Vasquez was at the El Troquero restaurant near downtown, a business owned by Antonia Rendon, when a man with a .45-caliber pistol grabbed him, said Felipe Reyes, the restaurant’s manager.

“He pointed the gun at Pablo and pulled him outside,” Reyes said. “Three men were waiting outside in a car. They pushed him inside and they drove off.”

Sunday night, the suspects telephoned Rendon, Vasquez’s longtime girlfriend, police said.

“They demanded $300,000 or they said they’d kill him,” said Lt. Jim Grayson of the Robbery Homicide Division. “They told her if she notified police, they’d start killing family members.”

But police already had been notified after bystanders called 911 when they saw the abduction. Vasquez was targeted for the kidnapping, sources said, because Rendon owns a number of restaurants.

For the next two days, Rendon negotiated with the kidnappers, as detectives coached her on what to say, police said.

The Rendon family left an undetermined amount of cash at one location Wednesday morning, police said. When the kidnappers picked up the money, they were followed by detectives from the LAPD’s Special Investigations Section, an elite surveillance branch.

The detectives determined where Vasquez was being held and, through Rendon, arranged a second pickup. On Wednesday afternoon, they followed two suspects in a red van as they were en route to retrieve the second ransom installment. McBride said that no money had been left for the suspects and that investigators had planned to trap them at the site.

Teams of detectives, in four unmarked cars, stopped the van at Gage and Compton avenues in the Florence area. They identified themselves, but the two suspects opened fire, police said. No officers were injured. Police recovered 9-millimeter and .45-caliber pistols at the scene.

“They came up on very desperate, armed suspects who tried to kill them,” McBride said of the officers. “They were fired on. Their lives were in danger.”