Police believe they’ve solved a pair of homicides where two men were gunned down in northeast Portland for their cars, late model Hondas.

One of the suspects was arrested in Corvallis on Tuesday morning, after a flurry of police action on Monroe Avenue.

Two weeks earlier, police had launched a statewide hunt for the vehicles of the slain victims.

Shawn Ryan Womack, 21, was driving a black Honda westbound near 26th Street adjacent to Oregon State University when several law enforcement cars surrounded the vehicle. A police SUV rammed the car head-on to stop it.

It was not confirmed whether that Honda belonged to one of the victims, who drove a black 2000 Civic that was stolen.

Womack and 19-year-old Cevelino Capiua have been charged with aggravated murder for the deaths of Chai Taphom, 28, and Michael Burchett, 38.

“This was a case of two innocent men who were violently and randomly killed,” said Portland assistant police chief James Ferraris.

Taphom was found dead in an alleyway May 13, shot several times “execution style,” said Paul Dolbey, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman.

His car, a silver 2005 two-door Honda Civic, was taken after he was shot.

On May 28, Burchett of Vancouver, Wash., was killed in a nearby area.

Acting Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer said the suspects were linked to both killings by ballistic evidence, and by witnesses who saw them with the same kind of car in the same area at a similar time of night.

Police said that when Capiua was arrested Monday — in connection to the robbery of a Beaverton Plaid Pantry — a check showed the plates on his vehicle had been switched, and the car was Taphom’s.

Investigation led Portland police to search for Womack at a Corvallis address.

Womack’s girlfriend, Jasmin Cooke Lesniak, 22, was charged with hindering prosecution and unlawful use of a motor vehicle in connection to the homicides.

She was in the Honda when it was stopped in Corvallis on Tuesday, and was taken away in an ambulance after hitting her head on the car’s windshield during the collision, witnesses said.

Monroe Avenue was blocked off to vehicles from about 9:15 a.m. to 3 p.m. while officers investigated.

The Honda stopped in Corvallis had license plates that belonged to a different vehicle, which were expired but registered to a local man.

That resident, contacted at his home in the 500 block of Northwest Polk Avenue, said he didn’t know anything about how his license plates ended up on another car.

Corvallis Police Department assisted Portland police in arresting Womack.

Police believe there is an additional homicide victim but declined to provide details.

Burchett’s sister, Debra Swanson of Lake Oswego, said police called and told her they made an arrest.

“As everybody says, it won’t bring my brother back, and my sister is about to have her baby any day,” Swanson said.

“What makes me grateful is they won’t be able to do this to another family.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Kyle Odegard covers Philomath and rural Benton County. He can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.