2 Executives of Firm Slain in Office : Violence: Laid-off worker stalked victims at San Diego electronics company, witnesses say. He surrenders hours later.

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 headquarters of Elgar Corp. on a 10-speed bicycle, police said. Less than three hours later, Larry T. Hansel, 41, a former technician at Elgar, surrendered at the 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.”

Hours after the shooting, as authorities were trying to piece together what happened, company officials were critical of police handling of the case.

The firm’s president, Bill Humphreys, complained that it took police nearly a half hour to come to the aid of the terrified Elgar employes. Police said their actions were appropriate.

The incident began shortly before 2:20 p.m., witnesses said, when Hansel entered the Elgar Corp. building through a side entrance. The building has no security guards, although visitors are supposed to check in at the front desk.

Two radio-detonated bombs exploded, starting small fires within the building and filling the corridors with smoke, witnesses said. The gunman 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.

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.

“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 when the gunman spoke, his voice was even, and he had a blank look in his eyes.

According to Drummond Murdoch, the company chairman, the gunman was seeking three supervisors in particular: Tom Erickson, the vice president of human resources; John Jones, vice president and general manager, and floor supervisor Bob Azima.

Murdoch said that earlier Tuesday Hansel had visited the two-story headquarters and asked “who was in the building.” At that point, Hansel was unarmed, Murdoch said.

At one point, sources said, the gunman approached a male employee, poked his gun into the man’s chest and inquired where the supervisors were. Then, he released the man.

The gunman climbed the stairs to the glassed-in executive offices on the second floor and opened fire, killing Jones and critically injuring another executive sitting in the same cubicle, 46-year-old Michael Krowitz of Spring Valley. Krowitz later died in surgery at Scripps Memorial Hospital, said hospital spokesman David Freeman.

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.

Neighbors and former colleagues described Hansel, who is married and has two young children, as a man with odd religious interests, but said he did not seem dangerous. Often he discussed the Bible, offering apocalyptic interpretations of specific passages. He told a neighbor recently that that the book of Ezekiel meant “EZ kill.”

In a more chilling episode, Hansel was reprimanded, shortly before he was laid off, 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.

After Tuesday’s deadly incident was over, company officials expressed their anger about police response time in the case.

According to police spokesman Bill Robinson, police dispatchers took the first call from Elgar at 2:24 p.m.--four minutes after Hansel entered the building. Six minutes later, Robinson said, the first unit arrived on the scene.

But according to Humphreys, the president, it was much longer before police officers actually approached the building. At 2:40 p.m., Humphreys called the police again and inquired 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.”

“My employees were on the phone to the police about 27 minutes before they actually arrived to the scene,” Humphreys said.

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.”

San Diego Police Lt. Dan Berglund said the 911 dispatch tapes would be researched to determine if police response was appropriate.

Times staff writers Nora Zamichow, Mark Platte, Greg Johnson, Alan Abrahamson, Chris Kraul and Caroline Lemke contributed to this report.