Gunman Shot, Wounded by Anaheim Police

Two police officers shot an armed man during a confrontation in the courtyard of an apartment building a block from the Disneyland Hotel early Sunday, but the man, who was hit in the abdomen, side and back, was expected to survive, police and hospital officials said.

The man was the 27th person to be shot or killed by Orange County police this year, and the sixth to be struck by Anaheim police bullets.

Lt. John Haradon said three Anaheim officers were sent to the 1600 block of South Michelle Drive just after midnight Saturday on reports that a man was firing a gun and knocking on apartment doors.

When they arrived, Haradon said, they found a man matching the suspect’s description standing in front of the Raintree Apartment complex at 1544 S. Michelle Drive.

“The man was holding a pistol, and the officers ordered him to stop,” Haradon said. The suspect fled and was followed by police into the grassy courtyard, where he confronted the officers, Haradon said.

“The suspect was subsequently shot by the Anaheim officers,” Haradon said. He refused to elaborate.

Nor could he offer a motive for the suspect’s behavior. “It looks like he was shooting the gun in the air and knocking on doors, but we don’t know why,” Haradon said.

One witness reported hearing a total of 12 shots fired but did not come outside because, she said, such shootings happen in that neighborhood “all the time.”

In keeping with the Police Department’s policy, Haradon refused to release the names of the two officers who fired their guns.

A spokeswoman for UCI Medical Center said the wounded man, who had not yet been identified, was in stable condition after surgery for three bullet wounds to the abdomen, side and back.

Anaheim Police Chief Joseph T. Molloy, through a spokesman, said he would not be available to discuss the incident until Monday.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, whose office investigates all police shootings, said it would be inappropriate to comment until the investigation is complete.

Authorities have been unable to explain the rise in shootings by police, from 11 in 1984 to 20 in 1988 to 27 so far this year, except to say that more suspects seem to have guns and that they seem to be more willing to use them against police.

“Maybe six times is a lot,” said Anaheim Councilman Irv Pickler. “It’s more than it’s been in years past, but the violence just seems to grow, and people are committing more horrendous crimes than they’ve done in years past.”

Haradon said the two officers had been placed on two days’ paid administrative leave, customary in such cases. Officers involved in shootings also are usually interviewed by a psychologist.

It was quiet Sunday morning on Michelle Drive, a street of deteriorating apartment buildings crowded with immigrants just one block west of the Disneyland Hotel.

A frayed, yellow police-barricade tape lay outside the entrance to the courtyard. Inside, where twin two-story apartment buildings face a small grass-covered area, a bullet hole in a storage room door was circled in yellow.

Clusters of residents stood outside their apartments Sunday morning, looking impassively at the area where the shootings took place only a few hours earlier. Several residents said they heard the shootings, but none ventured outside to look.

One woman said she did not live in the apartments but was spending the night with a friend there when she heard the gunfire.

“I heard six shots outside about midnight,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “Then a while later I heard six more shots. I never did hear the police come, but I heard the helicopter overhead.”

“I didn’t bother to look outside because this sort of thing goes on all the time,” she added. “There’s always shootings around here.”

Several other residents said they were home at the time but insisted they had not seen anything.

Another Raintree resident, a man about 35, stood in his doorway just a few feet from where the shots were fired.

“I was watching TV in my place with my wife when I heard the shooting about midnight,” said the man, who was standing Sunday morning surveying the scene from his doorway just a few feet from where the shots were fired. “But I didn’t see anything.”

None of the residents interviewed claimed to have known the victim.

“We pretty much know that he was not known to the neighbors in the area,” Police Lt. Ray Welch confirmed.

One Raintree resident, a man about 40, said that after being shot, the victim ran from the courtyard to an alley at the rear of the apartments, but this could not be confirmed by other residents.

Welch said police plan to file charges against the suspect as early as today, either for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer or for brandishing a firearm.

He said police had confiscated the weapon.