CHP OFFICER TO UNDERGO MORE SURGERY.

Byline: Jaxon Van Derbeken Daily News Staff Writer

California Highway Patrol Officer Rafael Casillas regained consciousness Thursday but remained in critical condition as doctors prepared for a second surgery to mend wounds suffered when he was shot by a fleeing parolee.

Casillas cannot speak, but his family, friends and colleagues have been doing the talking - telling the eight-year veteran from Saugus about the flood of support from well-wishers, and comforting him as best they can.

``He wakes up. He is just not completely coherent,'' said Tanya Kuykendall, Casillas' girlfriend and a fellow CHP officer. ``He can't talk. We can tell him things . . . but he can't respond right now.''

The 31-year-old officer was shot early Wednesday following a high-speed pursuit that ended at the Granada Hills home where Terry James Parker was living since his June 20 release from state prison.

Parker, 25, opened fire as Casillas stood at the door of the Harvest Street home. Parker was later killed near his home after he emerged from a bush and fired at Los Angeles Police Department officers.

Kuykendall said the outpouring of sympathy for Casillas has been overwhelming.

``It has been incredible, incredible. We appreciate it beyond words,'' she said. ``When he wakes up and is able to realize what is going on, all this he has all around him will help him heal faster.''

As the vigil continued at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, Casillas' colleagues arranged a blood drive in Santa Clarita on his behalf. He lost close to 40 pints of blood from his wounds, and he suffered damage to his main artery as well as to his pancreas and liver.

``We know it can happen to any of us. We've all been in a situation where we could have been hit but we weren't,'' said CHP Officer Don Gray, who traveled down with two colleagues from the agency's Fort Tejon station.

``It just brings it home,'' he said. ``Fortunately, we are able to give blood rather than being on the receiving end.''

Casillas is the second CHP officer in two weeks to be shot in the line of duty. The case is also the latest in a tragic series of shootings in which law officers have been slain or injured.

California Highway Patrol officials said Thursday that they are reviewing how Wednesday's pursuit and shooting was handled, but so far, a preliminary review showed that Casillas and his partner, Officer James Portilla, handled the situation according to policy and tactics.

``The information I have developed thus far, the officer did absolutely nothing wrong,'' said Sgt. Rick Linson, head of the CHP's enforcement tactics training program at the training academy.

``We have no way of knowing who we are dealing with when we make a traffic stop,'' he said. ``It would be nice to know that this is a coldblooded killer we're dealing with here, but there's no way we can determine that - obviously, if we knew that, our tactics would change considerably.''

Investigators say Casillas and Portilla were likely unaware of Parker's criminal past when they chased him from the San Diego Freeway to his home nearby Rinaldi Street. They had tried to stop him for speeding.

Parker - who was released from prison June 20 after serving two years in prison for convictions resulting from two run-ins with officers and a narcotics case - fell through the cracks and was largely unsupervised for the month before his attack on Casillas.

Court records showed that the felon had been abusing marijuana and alcohol since he was 12 and had been addicted for a decade to rock cocaine.

Dan Bell, regional administrator for the state Department of Corrections, said Thursday that authorities believe Parker was under the influence of drugs when the shootouts occurred.

Bell said that within days of his release, Parker was deemed - unofficially - as a parolee at large because the agent had trouble reaching him.

He failed to show up for a June 25 meeting and remained out of contact as the state considered Parker's request to move to Arizona.

``You might say he fell into a gap - there were attempts to catch up with him, he was somewhat evasive,'' Bell said. ``We were in the process of declaring him a parolee at large, when we were finally contacted by his father, who gave us the Granada Hills address.''

Bell said that it was not until Monday, after repeated attempts to reach Parker, that his father, James, called his son with the news that his move to Bullhead City, Ariz., had been approved.

The day of the shootings, a state parole agent was scheduled to visit the Parker home on Harvest Street to verify his residence and clear him to move to Arizona, Bell said.

The elder Parker said Thursday his son was home throughout July and that he never believed that authorities were going to allow him to leave. He was still bitter about a July 1994 incident in which he was shot by Los Angeles police officers who were trying to arrest him after a traffic pursuit, saying that the system had it in for him.

The shooting was ultimately determined to be out of policy.

``I told him it was done,'' James Parker said of the news that his son was cleared to go to Arizona. ``He said, `No, I don't believe it.' `` believed that they wanted to keep him here,'' Parker said.

``He said to me, `I get in trouble whenever I go out - they want to violate me and stick me back in prison. I ain't going back. I served my time.' ''

Parker apologized to the wounded officer for his son's actions.

``I'm sorry - I'm truly sorry for them. Nobody deserves to be shot. Terry, I guess for lack of other words, just flipped out finally.''

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Photo

PHOTO Blood donors check in at the American Red Cross in Va lencia on behalf of CHP Officer Rafael Casillas, who was shot Wednesday.

David Crane/Daily News