Brother Was Ominously Alerted to Trouble : Family: At 5 a.m., he got a ‘mysterious’ call from the gunman, who he said had a history of drug problems.

SAN DIEGO — The last time Robert Stroh heard from his wildly unpredictable younger brother, Darren, was a collect call Friday that came at the crazy hour of 5 a.m.

Darren was on the road again. Shivering from the cold, he stood at a pay phone somewhere off Interstate 5 in Northern California, telling Robert, his big brother, mentor and best friend, that he was heading for Robert’s home near San Diego, ready to start a new life.

Again.

Darren, a 22-year-old unemployed electrician with a history of drug problems, including a dishonorable discharge from the Navy for selling drugs, said that only four hours before, he had suddenly left his Oregon apartment.

And now he was back in the fast lane, driving south through the night in his battered 1978 Toyota Corona, not sure if the car could make it to the Rancho Bernardo home of the brother who had always listened, always helped him out of so many jams in the past.

“It was just so mysterious,” Robert Stroh, 24, said of the call. “All he said was that he was coming to see us and to start over again. He said he needed to get away from the immediate family, that he felt the walls were closing in.”

What Darren didn’t tell his brother was that along with a few belongings, he had also packed a double-barreled shotgun and two rifles taken from his grandfather’s home in tiny Foots Creek, Ore.

Twelve hours later, Robert Stroh and his young wife, Eva, sat in their tiny apartment, looking in horror at television footage of Darren being shot to death by a California Highway Patrol officer on an otherwise empty Orange County freeway off-ramp.

They listened to the ugly details of how Darren apparently had killed a good Samaritan motorist who stopped to help him when his car broke down. And how he led CHP officers on a 300-mile chase before the stolen car ran out of gas.

As he fielded phone calls from shocked family members, Robert Stroh talked about the little brother for whom he had looked out for so long. He talked of Darren’s efforts to reconcile with their father, about his struggle to beat a drug habit, and the failed attempts to get his often-detoured life back on track.

At times, Darren was also pretty confused, his older brother said. His parents divorced shortly after Darren’s birth, and their mother moved from Oxnard to San Diego with her three sons: Bill, the eldest; Robert and Darren.

After dropping out of school, Darren got into drugs--including marijuana and crystal methamphetamine. But his older brother worked to see that Darren didn’t drop out completely.

“I tried to reach out to him,” Robert recalled. “I tried to take him everywhere I went, to parties--everywhere. He thought everyone, even the family, was against him. . . . But I wouldn’t let him go.”

In 1985, after their mother remarried, Robert recalled, the three brothers went to live with their father in Longview, Tex. There, the boys were greeted by tough times and family arguments, Robert said.

They returned to San Diego soon after. Darren joined Robert at a school in El Cajon for youths who need extra help. When Robert was graduated, Darren dropped out again. And he got back into drugs, Robert recalled.

He went to Oregon to visit family, including his grandfather. And in 1989, at their grandfather’s suggestion, Darren joined the Navy.

By May, 1990, Darren--who spent most of his free time with his brother and sister-in-law--was in the brig, charged with selling methamphetamines. For months, Robert and Eva visited Darren in his cell. Even now, Robert insists his brother had kicked his drug habit, and was set up.

Darren was released and his wild life veered back toward Texas, where he got married last summer and worked as an electrician’s assistant. Six months later, the marriage was over and Darren was on the road once again, on a Greyhound bus headed back to Oregon.

Robert last saw his brother in Oregon over the holidays.

“Darren was in good spirits. Everywhere Eva and I went, he went with us. He was frustrated because there wasn’t any work. But we were together. We were like best friends again.”

Then came the bizarre call, the one that jarred Robert out of bed and into an uneasy reality on the day his brother died.

“I was worried about him over the phone,” Robert said. “He sounded a little confused about where he was going. He said he had to stop and see a friend in Los Angeles.

“And he was driving that old car. I was surprised that he made it as far as he did. I just had no idea that something this horrible was waiting down the road.”