LAPD BACKS HANDLING OF HIT-RUN CASE.

Byline: Eric Wahlgren Daily News Staff Writer

LAPD officials denied Sunday that a veteran officer - linked to a hit-and-run incident that seriously injured a mother and baby girl - was given special treatment, enabling him to flee a police station and kill himself.

Members of the victims' family have questioned the Los Angeles Police Department's failure to arrest 54-year-old Bryce Wicks as soon as he became a suspect in the Thursday night incident.

Wicks managed Friday to leave the North Hollywood station and shoot himself at home after a supervisor, who had told Wicks that investigators wanted to talk to him, became distracted, police said.

Dismissing charges that Wicks had been granted ``preferential treatment'' during an interview, a department spokesman said the investigation at the time was still in its ``early stages'' and that Wicks had been at the station working.

``Officer Wicks had not and was not being interviewed at the time that he left the station nor was he under arrest,'' said Officer Mike Partain in a written statement.

Earlier Sunday, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks defended the department's handling of the case that began when a car knocked Juana de la Cruz Mercado, 23, to the pavement and dragged her 10-month-old daughter, Leslie, 600 feet in Sun Valley.

``If we had the expectation that every time we set up interviews it would end in suicide - we would be in bad shape,'' Parks said. ``We don't slap handcuffs on everybody.''

Parks said the department is continuing its investigation into the 8 p.m. incident involving a white Ford Bronco. Witness descriptions of the vehicle and a partial license plate number led to the identification of Wicks as a possible suspect.

Parks said it should not be assumed that the case is solved.

``It is my understanding that the Bronco is in custody and we will clearly do more lab tests to attach it to the crime,'' Parks said.

The investigation will look into the circumstances that enabled Wicks to leave the station, police said.

Partain's statement downplayed the fact that a supervisor was distracted from watching Wicks after Wicks was informed that investigators from the LAPD's Valley Traffic Division were on their way to speak with him.

``At this time, the investigation was still in its early stages and there was only the possibility that a vehicle, similar to one that was registered to Officer Wicks, was involved in the accident,'' Partain said.

But Melchor de la Cruz, husband of Juana de la Cruz Mercado and Leslie's father, has told the Daily News that he was concerned about the way that police dealt with the incident.

``I don't think that if you do something like that, you could be free,'' de la Cruz said of the suspect.

De la Cruz also expressed sympathy for Wicks' family, saying that a different approach by police could have saved the officer's life.

``If they would have arrested him, maybe he would have not (committed suicide),'' he said. ``Maybe he would be alive.''

De la Cruz's wife remained in critical condition Sunday at Los Angeles County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center with a broken leg and collarbone, a hospital spokeswoman said.

His daughter, Leslie, was scheduled to undergo plastic surgery at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles for second- and third- degree ``road burns,'' hospital spokesman Ron Yukelson said.

But her condition was upgraded from serious to fair Sunday and she was transferred out of the intensive care unit, he added.

Offering possible insight into Wicks' emotional state before his death, police said Wicks' partner of 10 years, Ron Tracone, had shot himself in the head about four months before Thursday's incident.

Tracone's death reportedly had been a big blow to Wicks and Parks said Sunday that LAPD officers react to such deaths as if they involved family members.

``There is no way you can have the same close relationship and not have the same hurt,'' the chief said.

Wicks, a department specialist in fingerprint work, apparently shot himself in the head at his home in Acton, a community in the desert hills north of Los Angeles.