Man Is Shot to Death in Condo : Crime: The early-morning killing in a quiet, upscale neighborhood of Rancho Santa Margarita leaves residents stunned.

The 911 emergency call came at 6:08 a.m. Sunday. A dying man at 53 Gaviota asked for help.

Seven minutes later, county Fire Department paramedics arrived to find a man with a gunshot wound slumped against a wall of his small, one-bedroom condominium. He died about an hour and a half later at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center.

Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson said the man was in his 40s or 50s. He said investigators could not identify the victim pending further investigation. Olson said no motive had been established for the crime, which is being investigated as a homicide.

A neighbor in an adjacent condo said he heard a gunshot about 6 a.m. and saw a man fleeing on foot. “I don’t think it was a burglary because the man who was running away wasn’t carrying anything, and he had plenty of time to steal something,” said the neighbor, who asked that his name not be used.

The neighbor said the suspect fled the area in a car that had been parked nearby. “He took off to the cul-de-sac, and I heard the squeal of tires. He obviously had someone in the car waiting for him, for even before the car door slammed, I heard the squealing of the car taking off. It was too little time for that man to have gotten in the car and started it himself,” the neighbor said.

Meanwhile, other residents of the upscale condo area said they were shocked and fearful. “We moved here because we thought it was quiet and peaceful,” said a young woman who lives in a condo close to the scene of the crime.

Olson agreed that homicide is rare in the new planned community of Rancho Santa Margarita: “We just don’t get calls like this from out here. This is a really nice area.”

Gaviota is a small street about 200 yards north of Rancho Santa Margarita Parkway. The normally quiet area of white condos with red-tiled roofs was jarred on Sunday morning by the influx of investigators and reporters. Yellow tape denoting the crime scene blocked off swatches of sidewalk and the victim’s condominium. The screen from his living room window lay on the grass.

Olson said the emergency call to paramedics came from the victim, who lived alone in the downstairs, 510-square-foot condo. “Sheriff’s deputies and paramedics were dispatched to the residence,” Olson said. “When paramedics arrived, they found the front door ajar. The victim was found inside the condo, propped against a wall, and it appeared he had been shot.”

Olson said the victim had lived at the condo for a short time. He declined to comment on how the gunman might have entered the victim’s home, where the victim was shot or whether he had been shot more than once.

But a neighbor who asked not to be identified told The Times that he watched as the victim’s body was removed and saw a gunshot wound to the chest.

Neighbors said the victim apparently was divorced and had two small sons, about 5 and 7 years old, who visited him on weekends periodically.

One woman said, “That’s the only time I’d see the man outside--when his children were visiting. They called him ‘Dad,’ and that’s how I know he was their father and not their grandfather.”

“I never knew the guy’s name,” said one man. “He’d lived here about six months, and he was very much a loner. We’d just say ‘hi’ in passing.”