Probe Expected to Justify Slaying by Officers : Investigation: Inglewood police fired 66 shots, killing a kidnaping suspect after a chase. The victim’s family plans to file a claim against city.

Inglewood police said an investigation is expected to find that eight officers were justified when they fired 66 shots in two or three seconds at a kidnaping suspect after a car chase, hitting him nine times and killing him.

The incident was one of the most intense instances of police firepower directed toward a single suspect in recent memory, according to several veteran Los Angeles police officers and “officer-involved shooting” investigators contacted by The Times.

The dead man’s relatives say police overreacted and used excessive force against Gary C. Zeigler, 33, in what turned out to be more a domestic dispute between the man and his wife than a kidnaping. Zeigler was not armed.

“It looks like it’s a good shooting” (one that is within department guidelines), said Inglewood Police Capt. John R. Frazier, who is supervising the primary investigation of the Aug. 21 incident. However, “We have concerns with the number of rounds fired,” he added.

Zeigler’s wife, Margo, 32, said she doesn’t understand why police fired at all.

“There’s nothing that can bring him back, but why, why did they shoot him like that?” she said. “No one deserved to die the way he died.”

Results of the Inglewood police investigation, expected to be completed in a week or two, will be turned over to the county district attorney’s special investigations division for review. Inglewood police internal affairs officers are conducting a separate investigation of the incident, but would not release any details.

According to police and witnesses, the incident began shortly before midnight when Zeigler and his wife, both Hawthorne residents, were arguing in front of her mother’s home on Venice Way in Inglewood.

Zeigler, who was a custodian at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia, reportedly dragged Margo Zeigler into his 1980 GMC sport utility vehicle; another woman, Tracy Butler, Margo Zeigler’s cousin, also jumped into the vehicle.

A coroner’s toxicology report indicated that Zeigler’s blood-alcohol level was 0.24%, three times the intoxication limit for driving.

After receiving several 911 calls and a report about a kidnaping in progress, several Inglewood police cars pursued Zeigler’s vehicle at 45 m.p.h. to 50 m.p.h., police said. After a two-mile chase, Zeigler tried to turn left off La Cienega Boulevard into an entrance ramp for the San Diego Freeway, missed the turn and crashed into a chain-link fence. Margo Zeigler and Butler jumped out and ran.

At that point, Frazier said, at least four patrol cars and eight officers--whose names police have refused to disclose--were at the scene. Zeigler backed his vehicle into a police car, police said, went forward and began backing up again toward two officers who were outside their patrol car.

Believing themselves or their fellow officers to be in danger, Frazier said, the eight officers opened fire, seven with 9-millimeter semiautomatics and one with a .45-caliber semiautomatic.

“The whole thing took about two seconds,” said Frazier, who was not at the scene but based his estimate on the officers’ reports.

“It sounded like a war breaking out,” said Kevin Johnson, a security guard who had alerted police to the incident and followed the pursuit.

Margo Zeigler said she was shocked when she heard the police shooting.

“I turned and hollered ‘No! No!,’ ” she said. “Then the police put me down on the ground.”

Zeigler said she did not believe that her husband had ever intended to harm her. She characterized the argument as “a small thing,” but did not elaborate.

According to the coroner’s autopsy report, Zeigler received two fatal gunshot wounds in the back and head--one of which passed through both frontal lobes of his brain--and seven nonfatal wounds in the head, back, thigh and arm. Despite those wounds, police say, Zeigler attempted to drive away, with the GMC going 30 or 40 feet before hitting a curb and turning over on its side.

Relatives believe that Zeigler was not backing up toward the officers, and that they were never in danger and should not have fired. The relatives take issue with the police version, questioning how a man shot through the brain could have shifted out of reverse and then gone forward.

No weapon was found on Zeigler or in the vehicle.

Zeigler was pronounced dead about 25 minutes later at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital.

“Equipped with hindsight, (the officers) might have done some things differently,” Frazier said. He added, “We thought it was a righteous (actual) kidnaping.”

Will Harris, Margo Zeigler’s attorney, said the family plans to file a claim against Inglewood.

“The circumstances of this case raise grave doubts as to whether the shooting was justified,” Harris said.

Although Zeigler had been in trouble with the law several times since 1979, including a two-year prison sentence in 1990 for assault with a deadly weapon, friends and family members said he had since “gone straight.”

“He was always cooperative, personable and conscientious,” said Tim Lindsay, Zeigler’s supervisor at the arboretum for the last two years. “I want to know why my son is dead,” said Zeigler’s mother, Roberta Zeigler of Anaheim. “What (police) did was 100% wrong.”