Firefighter Shot by Alleged Arsonist

A Los Angeles city firefighter was shot and two others were injured Tuesday morning as they battled a Northridge house fire that was apparently set by the owner, a 72-year-old man who is believed to have shot at firefighters before killing himself in a backyard shed, police said.

The incident occurred shortly after firefighters arrived about 2:30 a.m. at a house owned by George Springer in the 9200 block of Encino Avenue.

Firefighter Yandell Bishop said that as he ran to the back of the house he heard a gunshot, then felt a sharp pain in his stomach.

“I heard the shot distinctly, and felt the shot,” Bishop, 42, said from his hospital bed. “If felt like a baseball bat hit me across the stomach.”

Two other firefighters seated in the cab of their truck received minor injuries from flying glass when the driver’s side window was shattered, authorities said.

Believing they were under attack, firefighters backed away from the house and called in water-dropping helicopters. The police bomb squad and SWAT team were also summoned.

Officers found Springer about 7:30 a.m. in a shed behind the house. He had apparently killed himself with a gunshot wound to the upper body, police said.

A shotgun, handgun and rifle were found next to Springer. Investigators believe at least one of the weapons was probably used against firefighters, Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Lt. Horace Frank said.

“But none of this stuff is solid yet,” he said. “That’s going to be the focus of the investigation.”

Police also suspect Springer was responsible for setting fire to a boarded-up house he also owned about a mile away in the 9200 block of Whitaker Avenue. That fire was reported about 1:40 a.m.

Family members told police that Springer was separated from his wife and had been going through a “prolonged, adversarial divorce,” Frank said. Investigators also believe the fires could have been motivated by a recent court ruling that would have forced Springer to sell the Encino Avenue property.

On Tuesday morning, neighbors were trying to determine what might have caused the gruff, white-bearded man, described by one resident as a “biker Santa Claus,” to snap.

Some remembered Springer as a bad neighbor with a nasty temper. According to Whitaker Avenue resident Jack Clements, Springer once cut down a neighbor’s picket fence with a chainsaw because he believed it encroached on his property.

Conditions at both of Springer’s homes were a source of complaints from neighbors and city officials in recent years. In July 1999, the Building and Safety Department ordered Springer to clean up trash and debris on the Encino Avenue lot, a spokesman said. Springer complied, but a new order was issued within months for additional debris and abandoned vehicles.

Springer failed to comply and the matter was referred to the city attorney’s office for prosecution. Records showed Springer had failed to attend two administrative hearings on the matter last year.

On the Whitaker Avenue property, officials did not act on a complaint filed two months ago that alleged unfinished construction was creating an eyesore. A spokesman said Springer obtained a permit to make earthquake repairs and its two-year limit had not expired. But neighbors had grown exasperated.

“His place was always a pigsty,” said Dan Foster, who lives directly behind Springer’s Whitaker Avenue house. “He was the grumpy old man who made life miserable for everybody.”

Others, however, remembered Springer as quiet but amiable. One neighbor said her children warmly referred to him as “the lonely man.”

“It’s just sad,” said Lisa Kampff, who lives directly across from the Whitaker Avenue house. “He was a loner, but he was neighborly to me. His house was rundown and he would say he was going to fix it up, but he never did.”

Meanwhile, Bishop’s friends and family were relieved to learn the nine-year Fire Department veteran would survive the shooting. It was a rare occurrence for city fire officials, who could not remember a firefighter being shot at since the 1992 riots.

The bullet entered just to the right of Bishop’s navel and traversed his midsection, coming to a halt in his right hip. Doctors said the bullet may have been slowed before entering his body by a metal O-ring on the firefighter’s jacket.

“I’d like to think it was my six-pack abs that stopped the bullet,” Bishop said with a laugh as he recovered from his wound at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “But I guess it was the O-ring.”

Bishop was eager to leave the hospital Tuesday, but friends and medical personnel persuaded him to spend the night. On Tuesday evening, he was watching TV in his hospital bed, talking to his fiancee Monique Bent and soon-to-be-stepdaughter Ashley.

“This is not supposed to happen,” Bishop said. “You go in to save lives and property, and you get shot.”

Fellow firefighters described Bishop as “selfless, jovial and a real good guy.” He was one of a group of firefighters who flew to New York last November to present the more than $2 million that the L.A. department had collected for families of New York firefighters killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“He used his own vacation time to go to New York and show his respect to the firefighters there,” said firefighter Edward Gonzalez, who works with Bishop at Fire Station 75 in Mission Hills. “He’s such a loyal, dedicated person.”

Bishop is planning on getting married Dec. 28. The wedding is going ahead as scheduled. “He’s going to get to the church on time,” Larry Fierro of the Los Angeles Firefighters Union said.

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Times staff writers Wendy Thermos and David Pierson contributed to this report.