Gunman, Police in JPL Shoot-Out : Suspect Gone After 8-Hour Shutdown of Facility, Search

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena was under siege Thursday after a gunman in a commandeered car with three terrified hostages careened onto the grounds and exchanged shots with Pasadena police before disappearing in the sprawling space complex.

By evening, nearly eight hours later, police and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s special weapons team members finished a painstaking search of the 176-acre facility and concluded, in the words of Sheriff’s Information Deputy Robert Stoneman: “We lost him.”

The suspect was identified by police as Timothy M. Howze, 36, of Pasadena, a janitor employed by a custodial service under contract to JPL and believed to have committed several armed robberies in Pasadena during the last several weeks.

That, according to Pasadena Police Sgt. David Harris, included the armed holdup of a business near Lincoln Avenue and Palisades Street on Thursday morning while he was being watched from a police helicopter.

As officers closed in, Howze reportedly eluded them by running out onto the Foothill Freeway and flagging down a Volkswagen driven by Mary Randall, who was with her elderly parents. Randall said the man opened the car door and pleaded, “Please, please, please. I need help. Please. Please.”

Before she could reply, she said, he jumped into the car and lay across her lap, ordering her to drive and finally directing her up Oak Grove Drive to where it ends at the south entrance of JPL, the heart of America’s unmanned space program in the hills of La Canada Flintridge.

The vehicle sped through the open gate with several Pasadena police cars in pursuit. When the small auto stopped, witnesses said, police jumped from their cars and shouted for the suspect to get out and throw down his pistol. Gunfire erupted and all four tires of the commandeered car were shot.

JPL employee Terry Badgley, 30, said the car moved forward a few more feet on flattened tires before the suspect leaped clear and ran into a building.

Johnny Guerino, foreman of a construction contractor’s crew working on the grounds, said, “I haven’t heard so much gunfire since I was in Vietnam.” He estimated that about 60 rounds were fired. Police said there were only about 10.

‘Thought It Was a Movie’

JPL electronics technician Adolfo Jimenez, 28, said that when the white VW came roaring onto the property and was fired at by police, “We thought it was a movie at first. Once we realized it wasn’t a movie, everyone was really scared, including myself.”

Randall and her parents, Magdelina and Arthur, were frightened but uninjured. She said the suspect told them, “No one in this car is going to get hurt. But I think I’m going to die today.”

As some employees fled from the building, the suspect managed to elude capture once again, reportedly demanding a janitor’s uniform shirt and even carrying a vacuum cleaner to complete the deception. A shirtless man was detained briefly by police, then released.

The sheriff’s SWAT team, helicopters and trained dogs arrived to help Pasadena officers seal off the grounds and comb through at least three buildings that were evacuated immediately. Employees in most of the rest of the 155 JPL buildings were directed by public address system to stay at their jobs--but to be on the watch for an armed and dangerous man who might have a bleeding left hand.

Employees Sent Home

As the afternoon wore on, virtually all of the approximately 6,000 employees were released to go home. Their cars were inspected as they left. Although the suspect had not been seen since shortly after noon in the area of the gunfire exchange, searchers decided late in the day that he may have found his way up the hill into a building containing a wind tunnel.

He was not found, however, despite an appeal made three times over the JPL public address system.