Gunman Kills 2 S.D. Executives : Terror: Laid-off worker, armed with shotgun, explodes bombs and then stalks executives while terrified employees flee electronics firm, officials say.
SAN DIEGO — Calmly stalking the supervisors who laid him off three months ago, a gunman took control of a San Diego electronics company Tuesday, scattering firebombs as a diversion and then shooting to death two top executives, officials and witnesses said.
The gunman, with a bandoleer of ammunition around his chest and carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, fled the Miramar headquarters of Elgar Corp. on a bicycle, police said. Less than three hours later, about 5 p.m., Larry T. Hansel, 41, a former technician at Elgar, surrendered at a Riverside County sheriff’s substation in Palm Desert.
“He said he had been involved in a shooting, and he believed he had killed two people in the San Diego area,†said Sgt. Gary McDonald, the substation’s watch commander. “He appeared to be calm and reasonably well-composed.â€
Neighbors and former colleagues described Hansel, who is married and has two young children, as a man with odd religious interests, who, however, didn’t seem dangerous. He often discussed the Bible, offering his apocalyptic interpretations of specific passages. He told a neighbor recently that the book of Ezekiel meant “E-Z kill.â€
Shortly before he was laid off in March, Hansel was chided for talking at work about John Merlin Taylor, the disgruntled Escondido postal worker who in late 1989 shot and killed his wife, then drove to the Orange Glen postal substation and killed two co-workers before finally killing himself.
The two slain Elgar executives are John Jones, vice president and general manager, who died at the scene, and Michael Krowitz, 46, a regional sales manager, who died in surgery at Scripps Memorial Hospital.
Shortly before 2:20 p.m., witnesses said, Hansel entered the Elgar Corp. building through a rear entrance. He set off two radio-detonated bombs, setting small fires and filling the corridors with smoke, police said. The gunman coolly stopped at the telephone switchboard and asked the switchboard operator to step aside. Then, witnesses said, he destroyed it with a shotgun blast.
The operator fled, escaping to a neighboring building and calling police. Police spokesman Bill Robinson said police dispatchers took the first call from Elgar at 2:24 p.m. Six minutes later, Robinson said, the first unit arrived on the scene.
But Bill Humphreys, Elgar’s president, said it was much longer before police officers actually approached the building. At 2:40 p.m., Humphreys called the police again and asked when help was going to arrive.
Later, he said, he overheard the police officer who first arrived at the scene explaining to a supervisor that he had parked a block and a half from the building because “it was a dangerous situation and it required a tactical response.â€
“My employees were on the phone to the police about 27 minutes before they actually arrived to the scene,†Humphreys said angrily as he stood outside the building late Tuesday. “ . . . I ask you: What are they being paid for?â€
According to witnesses, the gunman walked methodically through the building, keeping the muzzle of his shotgun down as he walked. Witnesses said his behavior appeared deliberate, not out of control--he did not fire indiscriminately and let several people leave the building.
“He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘You can go,’ †said Chris Kelford, the chief financial officer, who encountered the gunman on the first floor as he was trying to shepherd people out of the burning building. Kelford said that, when the gunman spoke, his voice was even, and he had a blank look in his eyes.
According to Drummond Murdoch, the company’s chairman, the gunman was seeking three supervisors in particular: Tom Erickson, the vice president of human resources; Jones, the vice president and general manager, and floor supervisor Bob Azima.
(Murdoch said that, earlier Tuesday, Hansel had visited the two-story headquarters at 9250 Brown Deer Road and asked “who was in the building.†At that point, Hansel was unarmed, Murdoch said. The building has no security guards, although visitors are supposed to check in at the front desk.)
At one point, sources said, the gunman approached a male employee, poked his gun into the man’s chest and asked where the supervisors were. Then he released the man, who fled to the roof of the building and was later rescued by police.
The gunman climbed the stairs to the glassed-in executive offices on the second floor and opened fire, killing Jones and critically wounding Krowitz, who was in the same office. Krowitz, of Spring Valley, later died in surgery at Scripps Memorial Hospital, hospital spokesman David Freeman said.
Late in the afternoon, Denise Jones arrived at the scene and sought out Elgar President Bill Humphreys. She looked at Humphreys and said that a relative had called her from Sacramento on his car phone and told her he had heard about the shooting, apparently on the radio.
“Bill, how’s John?†Denise Jones asked.
“Denise, we have to talk,†Humphreys replied, as he put an arm around the woman and spoke softly to her.
A few minutes later, she asked police if she could go inside the building to see her husband’s body, but police refused to let her in.
More than eight hours later, at 10:30 p.m., a spokesman for the county medical examiner’s office said that Jones’ body was still in the building.
Waldo Foy, a part-time worker at Elgar, said he was especially stunned by Krowitz’s death.
“Mike was totally uninvolved, and he had no influence whatsoever with production people,†Foy said of Krowitz, who was the western regional sales manager. “He spends about 50% of his time on the road. . . . He must simply have been there at the wrong time. It was purely bad timing.â€
Azima left the building when he heard Hansel was in the building with a gun, Erickson said. Erickson, who had hired Hansel in 1988 and had laid him off in March, said he nearly ran into Hansel in a hallway but managed to avoid him, escaping down a corridor.
After company officials realized that the gunman had targeted his victims, they became concerned about the employees’ families. Late Tuesday, before Hansel turned himself in, San Diego police were guarding Erickson’s Mission Hills home, Murdoch said.
According to witnesses, it appeared that the gunman scattered homemade fire bombs in several areas of the first floor, filling the building with smoke. The fires were brought under control, but the building was kept clear for several hours while experts searched for more bombs.
Police later found three unexploded Molotov cocktails outside the building, two radio-controlled explosives inside the building that were set off by the suspect and one radio-controlled explosive outside the building that was not detonated and was disarmed by explosive experts.
Hours after the shooting, police asked several witnesses to stay at the scene to help piece together what had occurred. As they sat on the curb, clearly shaken, one police officer tried to console them, explaining why there was a delay in the police response.
“We couldn’t go right inside,†he said.
As the search continued for hidden bombs, police did not allow Elgar employees to drive their cars home, sending them home in taxis instead.
City Manager Jack McGrory, asked about the criticism of the police response, said it would be evaluated.
“We’ll have to take a look at†the police response time, he said. But he noted that it appeared the Elgar incident was “not the kind of situation where you just send in two cops.â€
San Diego Police Lt. Dan Berglund said the 911 dispatch tapes would be researched to determine if police response was appropriate.
Late Tuesday, San Diego authorities were en route to Riverside County to take Hansel into custody.
Berglund said several weapons were registered in Hansel’s name, and, when Hansel turned himsel in, there were several weapons in his truck.
Times staff writers Mark Platte, Greg Johnson, Alan Abrahamson, Chris Kraul and Caroline Lemke contributed to this report.
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