GIRL DIES IN BUSTED STAKEOUT

Cop may have fired fatal shot as fleeing suspect stepped on gas; fugitive's
mom urges him to give up

A police dragnet widened Thursday for two San Francisco men who escaped
after a teenage girl was gunned down in their car. It remained unclear
whether police or one of the fugitives fired the bullets that killed the girl.

Police sought suspected drug dealer Raymondo Cox, 21, and his friend,
Michael Johnson, in his early 2Os, as Cox's mother and grand mother pleaded
through the media for him to give himself up.

It was unclear whether the fugitives were armed.

The teenager, who has not been identified and was believed to be Johnson's
girlfriend, was shot and killed, apparently by San Francisco police as they
tried to arrest Cox for missing a court appearance on drug charges. He also
was wanted for assault on a Daly City police officer, police said.

Cox and Johnson allegedly fled after the gunfire near Lake Merced, then
commandeered a motor-ist's vehicle in the Parkside District and escaped.

The girl was in the front passenger seat of a car in which the two suspects,
who authorities say tried to run police officers down, escaped early
Wednesday afternoon.

The girl was shot in the head.

"If you're printing this for my son to read, please tell him to please call
grandma, someone in the family (or) call me," said Cox's mother, Chequita
Cox, of Bellevue, Wash. "I love him. I just don't want to see him hurt."

His grandmother, Valerie Williams, with whom Cox lived in The City, also
pleaded with him to give up and expressed fears he would be gunned down by
police whether he was armed or not "The boy's in trouble," Williams said.
"OK, fine, but don't make it worse than it is."

Raymondo Cox has lived in San Irancisco since he was 15 and first came to
The City to visit his grand-mother, his mother said.

Police refused to identify the officers who fired or to release the name and
age of the victim, a juvenile, whose body was found in the car after a
head-on crash in the Parkside District.

The deadly events began shortly before noon at the Oakwood Apartments at 555
John Muir Drive on the west shore of Lake Merced near the Police
Department's firing range.

Police spokesman Sherman Ackerson said a team of SFPD plainclothes officers
from the joint FBI-SFPD fugitive recovery unit spotted Cox in a gray Mustang
in the sloping driveway of the big apartment complex.

Officers in the stakeout reportedly observed Cox completing a drug deal.

Cox was wanted on a $50,000 bench warrant issued in San Francisco for
failure to appear in court on charges of possession and sale of rock cocaine.

When one of the officers approached the car, its driver, believed to be
Johnson, apparently hit the gas "as if to run him down," Ackerson said.

Homicide Lt. David Robinson said two officers were believed to have fired at
the Mustang, registered to an uncle of Cox's, before it whipped out of the
driveway and sped north along John Muir Drive. Three shell casings were
recovered at the scene.

"I heard pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!" said Loni Brown, who lives in the apartment
complex. "Then one of the cops was saying, 'Anybody get hurt?"'

"We have to determine how she was shot," said Robinson. "We don't know if it
was the officers' rounds or the suspects' rounds."

But Robinson said there was no evidence from the scene or from witnesses
that the occupants of the Mustang had returned gunfire. The rear window of
the car was shattered.

Among the charges the fugitives will face, police said, is assault with a
deadly weapon and car jacking. "You can consider a car a multithousand pound
bullet," Robinson said.

The Mustang turned east on Sloat Boulevard but went out of control in the
1600 block opposite Lakeshore Plaza near 34th Avenue. The vehicle's left
rear tire was torn off as the car careered around the planted median strip
and crashed head-on into a westbound, Oldsmobile, whose driver was not
injured by the impact.

With the girl slumped lifeless in the front seat, the two suspects ditched
the car, police said.

One of the fugitives, possibly Johnson, accosted Zayed Zawaydeh, 68, a
retired grocer, who had just pulled out of his driveway and was stopped for
a red light.

"I saw this car running, but it was smoking, like it was on fire, and I
stopped for the light," Zawaydeh said. One of the suspects "came to me and
pulled me out like a small bear. He was a very strong ...... He just said,
'I want your car,' and he threw me out on the ground."

Zawaydeh was uninjured. He said he had not seen a weapon in his assailant's
possession. "I was really afraid," he said. "I didn't know what to say."

The dead girl was Johnson's girlfriend, according to Cox's grandmother. She
didn't know the girl's name. The two suspects were last seen driving
Zawaydeh's gray four-door 1987 Toyota Camry east on Sloat. Its California
license number is 2FAV515.

An all-points bulletin has been issued to law enforcement officials in
Northern California to be on the lookout for the suspects and the stolen car.

Off-duty San Francisco firefighter Bob Jackson was first to the scene of the
crash and tried to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the young
woman, who had been shot through the ear.

"At first I didn't even know she was shot," Jackson sai~ "She had no pulse,
she wasn't breathing, but I started CPR because I just thought there was
just a chance I could bring her back." He stopped the CPR when paramedics
arrived. He detected no sign of life, he said. Police would not say whether
the dead girl was a suspect in the narcotics surveillance operation.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett