Man Wounds 6 in Westside Barrage, Then Kills Self

A man armed with shotguns, rifles, pistols and a machine gun blasted his way through a Westside neighborhood during the night, firing nearly 100 rounds and wounding six people--at least one of them critically--before apparently killing himself, police reported Thursday.

Officers said John Southey Wise, 38, launched his fusillade on foot, wounding motorists along Overland Avenue near National Boulevard before taking refuge at his home on Dunleer Place in the Rancho Park area of West Los Angeles.

Wise then held off 80 officers for more than an hour with sporadic gunfire that whistled past police helicopters and peppered neighborhood cars and homes with bullet holes. Police, fearing injury to residents still in the area, did not return the gunfire.

After a three-hour lull, a police special weapons and tactics team preparing to storm the home with a mechanized battering ram spotted the man’s body, sprawled on the untended lawn in his back yard. Investigators said he died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Officers declined to speculate on what may have motivated Wise, but they said his wife had recently left him and evidence in the home indicated the presence of narcotics there. Court records show that Wise pleaded guilty to possession of restricted, dangerous drugs in San Bernardino Municipal Court on Sept. 27, 1973.

Neighbors described Wise as an unconventional man. Unemployed, his primary interests were said to have been his cars--two vintage Corvettes; his pets--among them a duck, a rabbit, an alligator and a boa constrictor; and his arsenal--which included at least eight pistols, four rifles, two shotguns, a machine gun and ample ammunition for all of them.

Police said Wise’s victims--all motorists--were taken to UCLA Medical Center.

Michael Gutierrez Sr., 21, was in critical condition with a chest wound. His 19-year-old wife, Verna Cisneros, suffered an arm wound and their 18-month-old son, Michael Jr., was cut by flying glass.

Struck in the Jaw

Ginger Meyer, 31, underwent surgery for a gunshot wound in the jaw. David Luchetti was treated for cuts from flying glass. Randy Cantor, 38, was treated for shotgun wounds in the leg and arm.

Police first learned of the situation at about 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, when Gutierrez flagged down a police car near Overland and the Santa Monica Freeway to seek treatment for the wounds that he, his wife and son had suffered moments earlier as they drove south on Overland.

Seconds later, Cantor was struck in the leg and arm by shotgun pellets as he drove south on Overland with his wife, Jackie, after an evening at the movies.

“I made a right off Pico and the next thing I knew, bullets started coming through,” Cantor said. “I said, ‘Get down! Get down! I’ve been hit.’ ”

Cantor pulled to the curb and he and his wife made for the open door of a nearby house--Jackie Cantor running, the wounded Randy Cantor crawling.

Donna Phillips, the resident who took in the Cantors, said she had been following the action on her police scanner radio.

“As soon as I heard the shots, I turned off the Dodgers and turned on the scanner,” Phillips said. She called an ambulance after aiding the Cantors.

Another victim, Meyer, was struck in the jaw as she drove along Overland.

An airport shuttle van driver, Carlos Schiantarelli, said he was returning to Los Angeles International Airport after dropping off a customer at the Ramada Inn in Beverly Hills when he heard gunshots and “an explosion.”

Bullets Hit Van

“It was the magazine rack,” he said, pointing to a bullet hole in the center of a periodical display in the van’s passenger compartment. One of the van’s tires was flattened by another bullet.

Schiantarelli, 31, who was unhurt and who was not carrying any passengers, said he stopped the van, jumped out and ran to safety. “There were gunshots, time and time again,” he said. “It sounded like a war.”

Police said the gunman ran to a shed behind his home in the 2700 block of Dunleer as officers, supported by two helicopters equipped with searchlights, surrounded the single-story house at the end of a cul-de-sac.

The officers cordoned off a 12-block area bounded by Overland, Pico Boulevard, National Boulevard and Manning Avenue. At least a dozen homes in the neighborhood were evacuated.

Loans Officer a Rifle

James Fay, 53, who lives across the street from Wise, said two officers set up an observation post at his home.

“One had a shotgun,” Fay said. “I said, ‘You want something with a scope on it?’ He said, ‘You got one?’ ”

Fay said he loaned the officer a 30-30 rifle with a telescopic sight. The officer used it to observe the Wise home.

Fay’s next-door neighbor, Gary Milligan, 44, said he loaned officers a flashlight. Milligan’s home was one of those struck repeatedly by Wise’s gunfire.

Police said Wise used a variety of weapons from his arsenal as he blazed away for more than an hour, firing at them, their helicopters, their cars and other houses in the neighborhood. He fired from vantage points in the shed and on the roof of his home.

One Last Shot

Then, after one last shot, the night fell silent. Witnesses said there apparently were no attempts by police to communicate with Wise by shouting or through use of a bullhorn.

At 3:36 a.m., a police radio reported: “He appears to be down. We’re going to go ahead and search. . . .”

At 3:38, the radio crackled again: “Suspect in custody. DOA.”

Times staff writers Bill Boyarsky, George R. Fry, Nieson Himmel and Guy Maxtone-Graham contributed to this story.