Deputy, Gunman Slain in Deadly Escondido Standoff

A San Diego County deputy sheriff was killed and two others were wounded by a heavily armed gunman who was slain at the end of a bloody, 12-hour siege at an Escondido apartment complex Saturday.

Officers killed the gunman at sunset as he ran from his apartment on Mission Avenue, firing an AK-47 automatic assault rifle. The apartment had been set ablaze by a bombardment of tear gas grenades and concussion bombs.

The slain deputy, Lonny Brewer, 29, of El Cajon, was a seven-year veteran of the force, the last two years as a member of the elite Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit. Brewer died of a massive chest wound despite emergency surgery at Palomar Memorial Hospital. He was only the third member of the department killed in the line of duty in this century, Sheriff John Duffy said late Saturday.

Unsuccessful Assault

Officer Scott Rossall, 31, of Encinitas, was in good condition at Palomar Hospital with a wounded leg. A third SWAT officer, Chuck Wagner of North County, was treated for a superficial finger wound and then released.

Brewer and Rossall were shot during an unsuccessful morning assault on the apartment of Robert Gary Taschner, 37, an apparent weapons enthusiast and suspected drug user who was well-known to Escondido police.

Taschner died in a hail of gunfire as he charged from his burning apartment with his rifle, wounding Wagner.

Taschner had been arrested Tuesday for alleged weapons and drug violations but posted bail Thursday and returned home. Escondido police confiscated numerous weapons from Taschner’s apartment during the Tuesday arrest, spokesmen said late Saturday.

The deadly chain of events began at 10:30 p.m. Friday at the Fairwinds Town House, 980 East Mission Ave., after a neighbor of Taschner reported a shot fired through the wall into her apartment, Capt. Mike Stein of the Escondido police said.

Police who responded found no sign of Taschner and left after taking a report from the neighbor, he said.

At 4:15 a.m. Saturday, police received another call regarding shots fired at the apartment complex. When they arrived this time, Taschner was in his apartment but unwilling to talk with them, Stein said. A police negotiation team was called in and made intermittent phone contact.

Called for Assistance

“He would talk for a while in a muffled voice, and it was hard to ascertain what his desires were,” Stein said. “(Some officers) felt that he wanted them to move closer to the apartment (so that he could fire at them).” Stein said “our best guess” is that Taschner was under the influence of drugs.

As a result of the standoff, Escondido police called for assistance from the sheriff’s SWAT team about 6:30 a.m. At the same time, police began evacuating residents of the complex and from houses facing the two-story building. Spectators at the Grant Middle School across Mission Avenue from the apartments were also moved from the area.

The SWAT team arrived about 7:20 a.m. and moved into position around the building for an assault, sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Alan Fulmer said.

“At 9:50 a.m., the team fired tear gas into the apartment in order to flush him (Taschner) out,” Fulmer said. “It did not work. He did not come out, and at 10 a.m. the team elected to force entry.”

With tear gas still in the air, the entry team--which included Brewer and Rossall--forced the ground-floor door of the two-story apartment and were immediately met by gunfire from Taschner who was in a prone position 15 feet inside the apartment, Fulmer said.

Fulmer said Rossall was the first officer hit. He was struck in the leg and spun around as he fell to the ground in the parking lot in the building entrance before being helped to safety by fellow officers. In the confusion of noise and gas, Fulmer said, the assault team did not realize that Brewer had also been hit.

“It was 10 to 15 minutes later that the team realized that Brewer had not fallen back with them,” Fulmer said. “They then saw him lying between vehicles in the parking lot and tried to rescue him.”

Decision Defended

Brewer was taken by paramedics to Palomar Hospital, where a surgical team led by Dr. Thomas Velky labored for more than two hours to try to save Brewer’s life. Velky said a single bullet had entered Brewer’s back just behind the left shoulder and passed through bone to lodge in his chest just above the heart. “It was in all probability a lethal injury, . . . and he was probably dead at the scene,” Velky said.

Fulmer and Sheriff Duffy defended the decision to assault the apartment despite the fact that Taschner held no hostages. “We have (these situations) at least three times a year, but they are dangerous, goddamn it,” Duffy said. The sheriff spent much of the afternoon with Brewer’s wife, Kathy, also a deputy sheriff and who was on traffic patrol duty Saturday in Poway. The couple had been married only three weeks and Saturday was Kathy’s birthday, Fulmer said.

Stein said the information about Taschner’s weapons arrest was given to the SWAT team when they arrived Saturday morning.

After the wounding of the deputies, the SWAT team continued its siege, with Escondido police shouting periodically to Taschner in an effort to get negotiations started again. At one point in the afternoon, police shouted a telephone number to Taschner, adding, “Gary, we’d like you to drop your gun, open the door, come down here and have your hands out . . . Gary, talk to me, I can’t quite hear you.”

Escondido police captain Stein said that Taschner’s father came to the command post during the afternoon and talked with police negotiators. “In our opinion, the relationship between the son and father was such that (the father) was not going to be of help,” Stein said, adding that Taschner talked at times about “going out into space” and was in general irrational in his comments.

In the late afternoon, SWAT officers from the San Diego Police Department’s team arrived in their special armored assault vehicle, which ironically has been put up for sale by the department because of its limited flexibility. Sheriff SWAT officers joined the city team and prepared for another assault attempt.

“The decision to go again was predicated on it soon becoming dark,” Fulmer said. “These things are hard to do in the dark.”

The armored vehicle rolled up the alley at 4:32 p.m., and officers fired tear gas grenades and poured arms fire into the apartment from the vehicle, shattering the windows and sending smoke through the roof. At the same time, explosive experts from the Sheriff’s Department entered the apartments on each side of Taschner’s and planted two concussion grenades on the walls. SWAT members planned to enter the apartment through holes blasted by the grenades.

However, Fulmer said that only one concussion grenade went off--to the cheers of neighborhood onlookers--and did not make a hole large enough for a deputy to enter. But with the apartment ablaze from the sustained, heavy gunfire, Taschner ran out the front door, firing his weapon, Fulmer said.

SWAT team members initially held their fire because Taschner was wearing military fatigues similar to those of the sheriff’s SWAT team and they could not be certain he wasn’t an officer, Fulmer said.

“There followed an exchange of gunfire, and he was hit several times,” Fulmer said. Taschner’s body was handcuffed and left face down on a thin strip of grass for several minutes in front of the apartment complex before being covered with a blanket.

Firefighters had to wait almost 10 minutes for ammunition inside the apartment to stop exploding before they entered to fight the fire.

“Brewer was a fine officer . . . you have to be to be on the SWAT unit,” Duffy said.

Only two members of the department have been killed in the line of duty before Saturday, Duffy said. Kelly Bazer, a sheriff’s cadet, was shot in the back Jan. 13, 1986, after being surprised by a robber as he was leaving a supermarket. Bazer was in uniform but off duty at the time. Duffy also said a deputy was killed in the 1930s while transporting a group of criminals to San Quentin State Prison from San Diego.

Times Staff Writer Richard Serrano contributed to this report.