Night at Races Turns Tragic as Santa Ana Girl Is Robbed, Killed

A Saturday night date to a motorcycle race turned into a night of horror and death for an Orange County teen-ager when she and her boyfriend ended up lost in the streets near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after the event.

The couple was held up at knifepoint--for $2--and when the two attempted to recover her purse in an alley off South Menlo Street, the apparent robber shot Suzanne Mohr Coleman, 16, of Santa Ana, twice in the head. She died three hours later.

Miss Coleman, a junior at Fountain Valley High School, and her boyfriend, Christopher Barth, 18, a senior at the school who lives in Fountain Valley, had spent two frightened hours searching for their car after they left the Super Bowl of Motocross at the Coliseum, but could not figure out where they had parked it, Barth said. It was the first time they had been to the stadium in Exposition Park.

‘We Were Confused’

“We were forced to park a few blocks away--the Coliseum lots were full,” a distraught Barth said Sunday afternoon. “When we got out, we were confused; we didn’t know where she had parked.”

They had parked the car south of the stadium, but were looking for it on the west side, said Los Angeles Police Department Detective Verne King.

“We walked around for about two hours trying to find the car. Then we met a guy who said he would take us to our car,” said Barth. “He helped us out and kept all the people off our backs. He protected us.”

King identified the man as Robert Burgos, 25, of Los Angeles, who lives in the area where the shooting occured.

Just as the trio had figured out where the car was, a man and a woman approached them, Barth said. The man had a knife. They took the girl’s purse, and fled on foot, he said.

Called Police

“We called the police, then we waited for about five minutes,” Barth said. “They didn’t come (immediately). The guy who was with us disappeared into an alley, then he came back and told us to follow him and we’d get the purse back.

“We followed him into the alley; he argued with a guy on the roof. It was the same guy who approached us. They fired a shot at the guy we were with and missed. We turned around to run, and they shot her in the head.”

Miss Coleman was brought into the emergency room at California Hospital Medical Center with two bullets in her head about 2:30 a.m., nursing supervisor Naomi Marvin said. She died three hours later, Marvin said.

Barth and Miss Coleman had been friends for about two years, Barth said.

Barth described the gunman as about 5 foot 3, 140 pounds, “with a medium Afro.” Police said they have no suspects in the case so far.