Standoff Ends With 2 Officers Injured, 3 Men Found Slain

A gunman firing wildly from inside a mobile home wounded two sheriff’s deputies and apparently killed three people early Monday before surrendering at the end of a nine-hour standoff, authorities said.

Heinz Joachim Podszuweit, 30, was arrested at his Lake Elsinore home on Plessner Way by Riverside County sheriff’s deputies at 9:05 a.m. Inside, authorities found the bodies of three unidentified males, along with a high-powered rifle and hand grenades.

Podszuweit, a burly man who was wearing camouflage pants when he surrendered after hours of tense negotiations with authorities, was described by a sheriff’s spokesman as a survivalist with a military background.

But little more was known about the man, the three slain men or motivation for the shootings.

“He kept to himself a lot,” said neighbor Gonzalo Cornejo, who has lived on the street for 10 years. “He wasn’t the kind who waved and talked and went out of the way to be friendly.”

Wounded in the incident were Deputies Albert Jones, who was struck in the foot by a bullet and hospitalized at Inland Valley Medical Center in Lake Elsinore, and Joseph Hack, who was treated for shrapnel wounds caused when bullet fragments bounced off his bulletproof vest and struck his shoulder.

The episode seemed out of place on Plessner Way, a peaceful, unpaved road lined with tidy mobile homes, most of them on half-acre lots and owned by retirees.

Neighbors said the shooting erupted shortly after 11 p.m. Sunday and continued intermittently past daybreak. Some residents likened the eerie sound to that heard on the battlefield.

“You could hear them whistling,” said Ray Mohlman, 74, who was visiting a friend who lives on Plessner Way. “The bullets were screaming around.”

Hunkered down in his brown mobile home, shrouded by a tree and encircled by two fences bearing a “No Trespassing” sign, Podszuweit fired his automatic weapon, leaving his mark on everything within range, witnesses said.

Kenneth Gray, a retiree who has lived nearby for 15 years, said he heard “hundreds of shots, lots and lots--you couldn’t count ‘em.”

Six patrol cars were damaged by the gunfire, as were other vehicles on the street and the walls and windows of adjacent mobile homes.

When deputies from the Lake Elsinore substation arrived at the scene, they entered Podszuweit’s home and were met by gunfire, resulting in the injuries to Jones and Hack.

Authorities then attempted to resolve the standoff through negotiations. The talks were cut off continually by Podszuweit, who was hysterical, deputies said.

After evacuating the area shortly before dawn, the sheriff’s special weapons team again attempted to enter the home. But they were turned away by gunfire.

To most residents, Podszuweit is a mystery, a man who kept a low profile and mostly worked on the dozen or so dilapidated cars and trucks that cluttered his back yard.

Cornejo said Podszuweit, who had lived on Plessner Way for about three years, was married and had a young daughter. But his wife and child had apparently moved out of the home last month.

Neighbor Ernie McIntosh, 68, said he once hosted Podszuweit in his home. Podszuweit had said he was a mechanic, and McIntosh was looking for help with his ailing Porsche.

“He was a big guy, and a few years ago he was a good guy,” McIntosh said, recalling their visit. But lately, McIntosh added, Podszuweit had become unfriendly and moody--even walking off in mid-sentence while conversing with neighbors in the street.

Also, Podszuweit had lately been receiving a stream of late-night visitors, irritating those who lived near him.

As police continued their investigation Monday evening, jittery residents said the violence was an unlikely visitor to their normally tranquil lives.

As Gray, 74, put it: “The only problem we’ve had here before this was when I had my boat stolen.”