Santa Monica shooting: Woman told she’d be OK if she cooperated

A woman carjacked Friday by a man she believes was the gunman in the Santa Monica shootings said he was quiet, calm and direct.

“You’re going to drive me to Santa Monica College and let me out,” said the man, dressed all in black with body armor and wielding an AR-15 assault rifle.

Laura Sisk, 41, of Culver City, said she figured the man was with the police or Secret Service. She was in an unfamiliar neighborhood, trying to avoid the roadblocks set up for President Obama’s visit when she drove her blue Mazda into the 2000 block of Yorkshire Avenue.

PHOTOS: Shooting at Santa Monica College

Sisk said she didn’t see the man until the car in front of her made a U-turn. When the vehicle cleared her view, it was replaced with the shooter, his assault rifle pointed at her, a bag at his feet.

“He told me to pull over,” she recalled, still clearly shaken. “He insisted I get out of the car and pick up his bag, I think it was full of ammunition, and insisted I drive him.”

Sisk said she tossed his bag in the rear passenger seat and told him to take the car.

“I said, ‘Take my car, take my car!” she recalled.

“ ‘No. You’re driving,’ ” Sisk said he told her.

Before taking the seat beside her, she said the man fired a number of shots into the neighborhood. At least one woman was injured, according to witnesses.

Aside from simple instructions on how to get to the school, Sisk said the man said little. She said he reminded her of a military serviceman: quiet, non-emotive. He had brown eyes, she said.

As she drove, crying and shaking, the gunman reassured her.

“He told me to calm down, ‘You’ll be all right,’ ” Sisk said. “He said he’d let me go if I didn’t do anything stupid.”

Sisk said that at one point when the car was stopped at a red light -- she doesn’t remember where -- the man stepped partially out of the car so she couldn’t drive away and began shooting again.

He got back in the car and said, “ ‘Go! Go! Go!’ so I drove, drove, drove,” Sisk said.

She pulled up to a dead end street at the college to let him out, then got out to put his bag on the curb. Sisk said she jumped back in her car and drove as far down the street as she could, then got out and ran.

Sisk said she was physically uninjured, though the same can’t be said for her car. Photos of the vehicle show it was riddled with bullets.

At least six people at three locations were killed during Friday’s shootings, including a woman on a sidewalk. A bus was also shot up.

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Santa Monica shooting: two dead, six transported to hospitals

Santa Monica College students describe moments of terror in library

Santa Monica College shooting prompts Obama motorcade rerouting

Joseph.serna@latimes.com

@josephserna