Police searched Westminster yesterday for a man who abducted a woman from a Baltimore pizza shop Saturday and held her captive 36 hours before she escaped in Carroll County.

Maryland state troopers with dogs and a helicopter combed Route 140 after witnesses reported seeing someone who fit the description of the suspect, who police said was armed with a semiautomatic handgun.

The 20-year-old woman, who was not identified, told police she had been held bound and gagged for two days in an abandoned city building, then forced to drive to a private gun range in Carroll County, where she said she escaped when the man tried to rape her.

Capt. Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman, said the woman was being treated at Carroll County General Hospital for injuries he said were not life-threatening. He would not elaborate on her injuries, and said investigators do not know if the woman was sexually assaulted.

The woman told police she was accosted by a gunman at the Pizza Time shop in the 2500 block of Washington Blvd. on the Baltimore County line about 7: 30 p.m. Saturday. She said the man ordered her to drive to a vacant building in the city, where she was bound and gagged.

Early yesterday, the woman said, the gunman ordered her to drive her Honda Prelude into Carroll County to a private gun range on South Gorsuch Road outside Westminster. Shipley said the man ordered her out of the car, then tried to rape her.

Shipley said the woman jumped back into her car and drove to the parking lot of a McDonald's restaurant on nearby Route 140, where she used her cellular telephone to call police at 8: 30 a.m.

Pub Date: 5/05/98