Gunman at UCLA May Have Known 1 Victim, Police Say : Violence: They are seeking witnesses to the killing of hospital escort. Security at the Westwood complex is beefed up.

A gun-wielding assailant who shot one woman to death and seriously wounded another in a maze of offices inside UCLA Medical Center apparently was familiar with one of the victims, police said Tuesday.

“We’re going on the assumption that the person knew one of the two victims, but we’re still uncertain which one was the intended victim,” said Los Angeles Police Lt. Ron Hall, one of several detectives involved in the investigation.

Though Hall said the Monday murder of hospital escort Diondra Ann Picou and wounding of escort dispatcher Nora S. Arellano appeared to be an intentional act, detectives have all but ruled out the possibility that the gunman was a hospital employee.

“We’re fairly sure it was not an employee,” Hall said.

Investigators were still searching for witnesses who may have been in the vicinity of the basement office in Westwood at about 5:40 a.m. Monday, when a male intruder nudged open the door to the hospital escort office and fired a large-caliber weapon.

“We have some leads and some people we’d like to talk to, but we don’t have a name suspect at this point,” Hall said.

Detective Steve Osti said that after interviewing Arellano, investigators were no closer to finding a suspect or establishing a motive.

“We haven’t learned anything new,” Osti said. “She said she didn’t know why anyone would want to do that. She didn’t even see the individual, because she was sleeping. . . . She didn’t know what was happening until it was all over.”

Picou, 22, of Gardena, had worked as an escort for just six months. She was struck in the chest as she sat at a table and died at the scene.

Arellano, 30, of Los Angeles, has worked at the center 10 years. She was shot several times in the leg and torso and was in serious condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Though investigators declined to speculate on the intended victim, co-workers said that only Arellano would have remained in the escort office during her entire 11 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. shift.

“There’s always a dispatcher there,” said escort Marti Navarro.

Escorts, who are dispatched to help patients find medical offices and who deliver medical equipment and urine samples within the labyrinthine hospital complex, normally linger only briefly in the escort office, which is not far from the hospital’s loading dock.

Escorts said that although the loading dock appears to provide easy access, an intruder would have to scale a 10-foot fence in order to use it.

Also, the assailant who shot Picou and Arellano might have come to the office from hallways that lead from any of several other entrances, escorts said.

Simply finding the office would have been hard for anyone who did not know how to locate it, police and hospital employees said.

“I don’t think our office would be on a map,” Navarro said.

Monday’s slaying appeared to be the first inside a UCLA campus structure since 1970, when an 18-year-old female student was stabbed to death in a parking garage during a struggle with an assailant. In January, 1969, two Black Panther leaders were shot to death at the end of a campus meeting about a proposed black studies program.

As a result of Monday’s shootings, medical center spokesman Rich Elbaum said security in the complex was being bolstered.

Hospital administrators met early Tuesday with some of the 75-member escort staff and told them that a guard will be posted outside their office from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Nevertheless, nervous escorts kept the office door locked throughout the day.

UCLA Police Lt. Jim Kuehn said a dozen additional security guards will be posted at entrances and will roam the medical complex throughout the day. And three extra armed UCLA police officers will patrol the complex during the same period, one added to each shift.

To calm nervous doctors and hospital workers, administrators also sent a note to all employees reminding them that the chaplain and other counselors are available to talk, Elbaum said.

Some hospital workers complained that the additional security had been too long in coming.

One angry employee, who declined to give her name out of fear that her job would be jeopardized, said that lack of security had been a continuing concern. She said some entrances had been routinely left unguarded in the morning hours and that even when she and other staff members arrived for work just before 6 a.m. Tuesday, the hospital’s main entrance was still unattended.

“We checked the entrance and there was no one,” the woman said. “You can wander around wherever you want to. Nobody asks any questions.”

But other workers said they were not unduly alarmed.

“In a case like this, it’s not fear, it’s concern,” said Frank Rice, an escort supervisor.

Police and co-workers of both victims said they were unaware of any incidents that might have presaged Monday’s shootings.

“There’s nothing in (the victims’ pasts) that offers any clues,” Osti said.

Steven Bradford, 30, a neighbor in the Gardena neighborhood where Picou grew up, said acquaintances of her family were equally bewildered.

“She never had an enemy in the world,” said Bradford, vice president of the Gardena Hollypark Homeowners Assn. “She was a girl who had never been in a day of trouble.”

Lillian Picou of Gardena, a distant relative, said only that Diondra Picou came from a church-going Baptist family.

“I tell you, they were respectable people,” she said.

Other relatives and friends, some carrying dishes of food, gathered at the family’s home in the 2300 block of West 134th Place to give their condolences. Window shades and curtains were drawn.

“Right now we’re not ready to talk to anyone about it,” said one relative who answered the door. “You can understand that.”

Times staff writer John H. Lee contributed to this story.