Gunman Ordered to Stand Trial in Rampage That Killed Two

A laid-off electronics technician was ordered to stand trial for murder Tuesday after nine survivors of a June shooting rampage testified that he set off explosions before stalking and killing two top executives at a San Diego electronics company.

According to the testimony, Larry T. Hansel, 41, also aimed his gun at a third employee at Elgar Corp. but didn’t shoot after the man ordered Hansel not to. Another witness said Hansel told him he was sorry.

At a preliminary hearing before San Diego Municipal Judge E. Mac Amos Jr., Hansel pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was held without bail. His lawyer, Alex Loebig Jr., said that, during the June 4 massacre, Hansel saw himself as a “sacrificial lamb” who was acting “for the greater good of humanity.”

“While he did know what he was doing, he didn’t morally do anything he would believe to be wrong,” Loebig said. He said that, although Hansel denies his own mental illness, “he’s psychotic now, he was psychotic then and he has been for a very long time.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregg McClain said that the way Hansel planned the shooting and focused on certain victims while letting others escape made him believe that Hansel was not insane at the time of the crime.

“I feel confident I can substantiate that,” he said.

Hansel, who had been laid off three months before the shootings, will be tried for the slayings of John Jones, 48, Elgar’s vice president and general manager, and Michael Krowitz, 46, a regional sales manager.

He also is charged with burglary and igniting an explosive device, and McClain said he plans to add at least two counts of attempted murder when Hansel is arraigned in Superior Court next month.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Hansel sat expressionless at the defense table as his former colleagues described him as an eccentric man who liked to talk about his bizarre religious and philosophical theories. Among his favorite topics, witnesses said, were spies, creeping communism, the Antichrist and the end of the world, which he believed was imminent.

But, when Hansel first arrived at Elgar about 2 p.m. on the day of the shooting, witnesses said, he had something else on his mind: the six men he believed were responsible for his losing his job. As he searched for them, Hansel came face to face with several other employees, many of whom testified Tuesday.

James Ludwig, an Elgar engineer, said he encountered an unarmed Hansel at the building’s back entrance. Ludwig recalled that Hansel said he had “just come by to see some old familiar faces” and inquired whether three particular people still worked there. Then the conversation took a strange turn.

“He started talking about laying employees off--that they never seemed to lay off the thieves,” Ludwig recalled. “He asked if we had heard that nowadays they were putting cameras in the eyes of mannequins to catch people who steal.”

James A. Corrigan, a quality assurance engineer, saw Hansel a few minutes later inside the building. Hansel had a shotgun and a bandoleer of ammunition slung around his chest, he said.

“All I could think to say is, ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Corrigan recalled. “To the best of my recollection, he said he was sorry, too.”

Witnesses said Hansel then shot out the switchboard, having shooed the receptionist away before he fired, and headed upstairs to the executive offices.

Jess D. Marinez Jr., who was Elgar’s director of business development at the time, testified that he was on the telephone when Hansel arrived on the second floor. Marinez said he saw Hansel shoot in the direction of Jones and Krowitz, who both “went down.”

Then, from beneath his desk, Marinez saw Hansel point his shotgun downward, toward one of the felled men. All Marinez could see was a pair of legs, and when Hansel fired again, he saw the legs move.

“The feet were pointed upward, but, with the impact, they seemed to flip in another direction,” said Marinez, who later fled to safety by jumping from a second-floor balcony.

Dario Maxx Vega, who works in Elgar’s test engineering department, said he had come upstairs to retrieve some paperwork when he first saw Hansel stepping over a body. After watching Hansel shoot Jones, Vega said, he realized Hansel had noticed him.

“We met eyes. He tracked me with the gun up against the wall,” Vega said. “I said, ‘Don’t (mess) with me. You do not want to (mess) with me.’ The guy looked me straight in the eye. . . . The gun barrel seemed very huge to me at the time.”

Vega dived and tumbled, eventually taking cover under a desk. But Hansel didn’t shoot. Instead, Vega said, he continued his search, mumbling two names--those of Tom Erickson, the vice president of human resources, and floor supervisor Bob Azami--under his breath.

Outside the courtroom, Vega said his psychologists have told him it is likely that his forceful verbal warning is “why I’m still here today. I can’t stop bullets, but I guess my voice can.”

John Phelps, a customer service expediter at Elgar, was one of several people who said they saw Hansel riding away from the scene on a bicycle.

“There didn’t seem to be any rush. He wasn’t in a hurry,” he said. “He was riding at a leisurely pace--that’s what struck me.”

A few hours after the shootings, Hansel drove to Palm Desert and surrendered to Riverside County sheriff’s deputies. San Diego police detectives have said that Hansel confessed freely to the shootings.

A search of Hansel’s home revealed a shotgun, a rifle, a shotgun cleaning kit and ammunition. Also found were a U.S. Army field manual for booby traps, fuses, sections of pipe, magnets and a homemade “electrical firing machine.” A piece of paper found in his home said, “Congress Declares Bible Word of God.”