Man Shoots Six, Kills Self in Rampage on Westside

A man armed with shotguns, rifles, pistols and a machine gun blasted his way through a Westside neighborhood during the night, firing nearly 100 rounds and wounding six people--at least one of them critically--before apparently killing himself, police reported this morning.

Officers said John Southey Wise, 38, launched his fusillade on foot, wounding five motorists near Overland Avenue and National Boulevard before taking refuge at his home on Dunleer Place.

Wise then held off 80 officers for more than an hour with sporadic gunfire that whistled past police helicopters and peppered neighborhood cars and homes with bullet holes. Police, fearing injury to residents still in the area, did not return the gunfire.

After a three-hour lull, a police Special Weapons and Tactics team preparing to storm the home with a mechanized battering ram spotted the man’s body, sprawled on the untended lawn in his back yard. They said he died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Narcotics Indicated

Officers declined to speculate on what may have motivated Wise but they said that his wife had recently left him and that evidence in the home indicated the presence of narcotics there.

Neighbors described Wise as an unconventional man. He was unemployed, and his primary interests were said to be his cars--two vintage Corvettes, his pets--among them a duck, a rabbit and a boa constrictor--and his arsenal--which included at least eight pistols, eight rifles, two shotguns, a machine gun and ample ammunition for all of them.

The victims--all motorists--were taken to UCLA Medical Center.

Randy Cantor, 38, was released after treatment for shotgun pellet wounds in the leg and arm.

‘Get Down! Get Down!’

The others, who were not immediately identified, included a 21-year-old man, listed in critical condition with a chest wound; the man’s 19-year-old wife and 18-month-old daughter, both of whom were treated and released; a 31-year-old woman who underwent surgery after suffering a gunshot wound in the jaw and a man who suffered a minor neck wound.

Police first learned of the situation about 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, when the 21-year-old man flagged down a passing police car. Seconds later, Cantor was struck in the leg and arm by shotgun pellets as he drove south on Overland with his wife, Jackie. “I made a right off Pico, and the next thing I knew, bullets started coming through,” Cantor said later. “I said, ‘Get down! Get down! I’ve been hit.’ ”

Police said the gunman ran to the shed behind his home in the 2700 block of Dunleer as officers, supported by two helicopters equipped with searchlights, surrounded the single-story house at the end of a cul-de-sac.

The officers said Wise used a variety of weapons from his arsenal after holing up at his home, firing at them, their helicopters, their cars and the homes in the neighborhood from vantage points in a back-yard shed and the roof of his single-story home.