Mercer Island police yesterday were still looking for three young men suspected in two unrelated crimes that rattled the neighborhood earlier this week.

But in the aftermath yesterday, police said the crimes should serve as a reminder to island residents that their often sleepy neighborhoods have seen a recent increase in property crime — and aren't immune to violence.

Tuesday night, detectives searched a West Seattle apartment of one of the suspects, and have interviewed a woman who was found driving a sport-utility vehicle that two of the suspects used in a burglary, police said.

Mercer Island police Officer Jennifer Franklin, a department spokeswoman, said investigators know who all the suspects are, but she declined to elaborate.

The first of Tuesday's crimes started early in the morning, when two men in their 20s assaulted a Mercer Island police officer in the Mount Baker Tunnel in Seattle, then stole his patrol car. They drove it on Interstate 90 back to Mercer Island, where another officer shot one of the men.

The wounded man, 22, from Seattle, remained in Harborview Medical Center yesterday and was expected to survive.

The second suspect ran away, and police said they figure he made it off the island before officers could mobilize a search.

Several hours later, in a wholly separate incident, two other men in their 20s fired shots at a Mercer Island woman who had followed them after she caught them burglarizing her home, police said. After the shots were fired, the men escaped in a Ford Expedition.

That night, detectives searched the apartment of one of those burglary suspects, and they stopped the Expedition and another car on Interstate 5 near Southcenter. The men weren't inside. But police arrested the two women driving the vehicles, held them for about four hours for questioning and then released them, Franklin said.

The two incidents Tuesday, while unrelated to each other, should serve to wake up residents to the possibility of serious crime on the island, police said yesterday.

Mercer Island had the third-lowest crime rate among Eastside cities in 2003 — behind Duvall and Sammamish, according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

But the city's crime rate increased by more than 60 percent during the first six months of 2004 compared with the same period in 2003, according to the sheriff's association.

While violent crime dropped by roughly 43 percent, property crime increased by 64.4 percent.

Police cautioned that property-crime increases are often cyclical and shared by other cities in the region.

In the case of Tuesday's burglary, the woman had locked her home. Still, police said, island residents generally have made things much too easy for crooks.

Many of the island's car thefts have resulted from people leaving their keys in their cars, said police Sgt. Lance Davenport. Computers and purses are left exposed.

"If you can imagine it, they've left it out in the open for all to see," Davenport said.

Franklin said she often responds to burglaries and finds that the garage door was left open.

"What we're hearing over and over is, 'This is Mercer Island. We don't need to lock it up. I thought it was safe here,' " Davenport said.

The woman who ran into the burglars did not follow them intentionally, Franklin said. She and the burglars were both fleeing the scene, and happened to go the same direction.

The police shooting of the man in the patrol-car theft was the city's first officer-involved shooting in more than two years. In December 2002, an officer shot a 36-year-old Lynnwood man in the knee as he tried to rob a bank.

Ashley Bach: 206-464-2567 or abach@seattletimes.com

Lead Eastside news assistant Nyssa Rogers contributed.