Man Slain at Border Arrested Previously for Concealed Gun

K.C. Janulaitis, shot to death Sunday by U.S. Customs officers while being sought as a suspect in the killing of an Orange County Fire Department arson investigator, was arrested last month in San Clemente for carrying a concealed weapon, authorities said Monday.

Arson investigator Dennis J. Donelson, 46, was killed Saturday in the San Juan Capistrano apartment of Barbara Lynn Clark, 31, who was wounded in the incident.

Janulaitis, a self-employed computer programmer, was shot to death after he opened fire on customs officers Sunday as he tried to return to the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro border crossing, San Diego police said.

San Diego Police Department spokesman Bill Robinson said Monday that Janulaitis was shot four times in the head and back by two customs agents as he tried to flee about noon. Robinson said the agents fired seven rounds at Janulaitis, whom they tried to stop after discovering Orange County authorities considered him an armed and dangerous suspect in the Saturday shootings.

On Sept. 16, police said Monday, Janulaitis had been arrested in San Clemente on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. He was driving a 1982 Cadillac Coupe de Ville registered in Minnesota in the names of Clark’s parents.

Weapon Confiscated

The gun, a .380-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, was confiscated, and he was released on his own recognizance. He was to have appeared in court Oct. 16. The weapon was spotted in the car by a passerby, police said.

Janulaitis, who also went by the alias of Casey Janis, also was a suspect in the July 26 arson of Clark’s previous residence, a fire that officials say Donelson was investigating.

Donelson, a married father of three who lived in Seal Beach, had been an arson investigator five years. He died at Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo Saturday after undergoing surgery for a gunshot wound to the lower abdomen.

He had begun his fire service with the Palos Verdes Estates Fire Department. He later spent 14 years as a firefighter and battalion chief with the Seal Beach Fire Department. Since 1982, he had been an arson investigator with the county. And for the last few years, said Capt. Ronald S. Blough, a county Fire Department spokesman, Donelson also served as chairman of the Seal Beach 10-kilometer run for the American Cancer Society.

Clark, who worked at Brass Beds for Less in Mission Viejo, was shot once in the side and was reported in fair condition Monday afternoon in the same hospital’s intensive care unit.

Spokesmen for the county Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department, which is investigating Donelson’s murder, reiterated Monday that they did not know the nature of Clark’s relationship with Janulaitis but said Donelson had been investigating the fire at the San Juan Capistrano condominium she had rented.

They said Janulaitis was a prime suspect in the arson, which caused damaged estimated at $70,000, and that Donelson was on duty at 1:30 a.m. Saturday when a man fired several shots into an open bedroom window.

“Our problem in sorting all this out right now is that two of the people are dead; the third is in intensive care,” said Lt. Richard J. Olson of the Sheriff’s Department. “We still haven’t talked to (Clark) yet for any length of time, and because the suspect is dead and not at large, we have the time to wait until she’s able to talk to us.”

James Trufan, Clark’s next-door neighbor at the condominium, said that Janulaitis and Clark knew each other and that he had been introduced to Janulaitis by friends of Clark whom he also knew.

The July 26 fire was not Clark’s first introduction to law-enforcement authorities, Olson said Monday.

Chased by Man

A month earlier--at the same condominium, in the 30700 block of Calle Chueca--a 53-year-old man hit Clark in the face, chased her down the street with a shovel and smashed the windshield of her Cadillac with a fireplace poker, Olson said. He said deputies were called to the address about 4 a.m. June 22.

Clark told deputies that she had paid two Marines who were at the condominium to move some furniture for her. Darrell Lloyd Rankin arrived at the home and became “irate and upset,” Olson said. According to crime reports, Olson said, Rankin struck Clark, left the home, returned and broke in through a sliding glass door and started “breaking and ripping everything apart in the home--windows, mirrors, everything.”

Deputies summoned to the scene “could see him from outside swinging away” and called in backup units, Olson said. Rankin was arrested without resistance, he added.

Clark’s Cadillac is registered in Minnesota to her parents, Department of Motor Vehicle records showed.

The search for Janulaitis on Sunday was initiated by information provided by a couple who had run to Clark’s one-bedroom condominium--where she had lived less than two months--after the shooting Saturday, Olson said.

Scott Bates, a 19-year-old Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, said he and his wife, Yvonne, live above Clark in the same condominium complex. He said they heard at least three shots and screaming and saw a silver 1985 Chevrolet Camaro being driven away.

When they reached the downstairs condominium, they said, they found Donelson almost unconscious and Clark sitting nearby, bleeding from her right side. Clark told Yvonne Bates to take down information she was going to give her as Scott Bates tried to stop the bleeding. Yvonne Bates said Clark told her that Janulaitis drove a silver Camaro and that the Bateses had seen the car at least once during the past week.

A co-worker at Brass Beds for Less said Monday that she didn’t think it would be wise to talk about Clark, “what with everything that’s going on.”

Janulaitis’ neighbors said Monday that they knew very little about him.

Trufan, who knew of the fireplace poker assault, said Janulaitis was known in downtown San Juan Capistrano.

“Everyone who knows him is very surprised,” Trufan said. “He seemed like such a nice guy, so quiet.”

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this story.