Northridge Driver Kills Passenger, Himself : Violence: A gunman’s van hits five parked vehicles before he stops and fires the fatal gunshots.

Residents of a quiet Northridge street awakened by sounds of crashing cars early Saturday poured out of their homes in time to hear the driver of a van shoot his passenger before turning a gun on himself, police and witnesses said.

The shootings took place about 1:45 a.m. after a late-model Ford van traveling north on Louise Avenue struck five parked vehicles just south of Roscoe Boulevard, they said.

The van stopped in the 8000 block of Louise and when a resident went to check on the vehicle’s occupants gunfire erupted, Los Angeles Police Detective Dwayne Burris said.

Police found passenger Sylvia Rosalas, 26, of North Hollywood, and the driver, a 21-year-old Northridge man whose identity was being withheld pending notification of relatives, dead inside the van, said Tom Schwabe, an investigator for the county coroner’s office.

Sounds of cars crashing and the shots shook residents awake.

“As soon as I heard the first boom I went outside because I thought my car had been hit,” said Hamid Rasool, who has lived on Louise for five years. “But then I heard shouting and about 30 seconds later I heard gunshots fired.”

The van knocked the side view mirror off a Pontiac Bonneville, scraped the side of a station wagon and then hit a Toyota pickup, a Plymouth Horizon and a Honda Prelude before its progress was blocked by a tar boiler, residents said.

Following the crashes, Jeff Allen, a resident, approached the van to check on its occupants, Burris said. From inside the van, Rosalas told Allen to let the driver back up.

The car did not move, but shots erupted, Burris said. Allen and other residents took cover inside their homes and called police.

A preliminary investigation determined that the driver shot Rosalas several times in the upper body before shooting himself in the head, Burris said. A handgun was discovered in the driver’s lap.

Detectives were unavailable to comment on the relationship between Rosalas and the driver or on a motive for the shootings.

Chanta McClanahan, who was visiting Allen and his father, said Allen approached the van and heard the occupants speaking in Spanish. She said he spoke with Rosalas, but that he never saw the van’s driver.

“They could see us well because we had our porch lights on, but we couldn’t see them very well because it was dark inside the van,” McClanahan said. “I don’t know if they were arguing, but she didn’t seem upset and I don’t think she knew what was going to happen.”

McClanahan said Allen did not know a shooting had occurred. “He thought the driver had lit a firecracker to scare us, but I told him that it sounded like gunshots being fired,” McClanahan said.

Lauren McComie said she and her father rushed outside after hearing the car crashes and watched Allen exchange words with Rosalas. “The woman in the van never even screamed, but when I heard the shots I ran to get away,” she said.

The shootings shocked residents and raised new concerns over safety in their neighborhood.

“It’s amazing,” Rasool said. “It’s the first time something like this has ever happened in our neighborhood.”

Rasool’s sentiments were echoed by Darleen Hartman.

“When you’ve got three small kids, you wonder where the bullets are going to land the next time,” Hartman said.