War Between Man, Disease: AIDS Patient’s Last Hours : Barricade: For years, Alberto Alvizuri expected death. On Tuesday he battled police, then took his life.

The signs of Alberto Alvizuri’s battle with police were evident everywhere Wednesday in the pleasant room at the Mid-Cities AIDS shelter where he had lived for the last two years, not clear whether to fight death or hope for it.

In the ceiling were holes from some of the dozens of bullets he had fired in a three-hour standoff the day before with surrounding police officers and their hovering helicopters. Tear gas lingered, still potent. A pool of dried blood had formed on the twin bed where he apparently took his life; a single shell casing lay within the stain.

There were as well in Alvizuri’s room signs of another sort of battle, a war of attrition between man and disease that, in the end, appeared to have claimed his mind before it could take his body. These, more than the bullet holes and the gas, spoke hauntingly of the agony of AIDS and of his final hours.

Behind Alvizuri’s bedroom door was a straw crucifix propped up by cloves of garlic. A nearly drained whiskey bottle, forbidden at the shelter, sat on his desk. Around the room were notes in Spanish about black magic and an unforgiving Christ. Next to his bed was an envelope that bore what appeared to be Alvizuri’s frantic, final scribblings.

“Kevin Costner--Thank you for making the movie ‘Dances With Wolves.’ You are the only American,” it said. On the back was a different message, apparently directed at others, “Pardon if at the end I turned crazy! . . . some of the bullets were destined for ustedes (you).”

As she surveyed this room Wednesday, Pamela Anderson, manager of Casa de Nuestra Senora, the six-bed AIDS shelter at 1428 12th Ave. that is run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, shook her head, tears in her eyes.

She did not know whom you referred to.

“We may never know,” she said. “I keep asking myself over and over, is there something I could have done?”

Alvizuri was 34 years old, an educated Bolivian who had come to the United States 15 years ago. He was once a machinist and electronics expert, according to records at the shelter. He had been diagnosed with AIDS nearly four years ago, Anderson said. At that time, the doctor told him he had three to six weeks to live. But he lived on. Two years ago he went to Casa Nuestra, just a few months after it was opened.

The shelter is not a hospice, said Peter McDermott, executive director of the Serra Ancillary Care Corp. that administers Casa Nuestra and a second AIDS shelter in Long Beach. Hospices, he said, are where people go to die. This shelter, he said, was where AIDS patients could go to live, in most cases shortly after they had been diagnosed.

Alvizuri was the senior resident in the Craftsman-style home. His room was upstairs, in the back, and had a balcony. He was a loner who watched public television and read in his room for long hours at a stretch.

Almost perversely, before he died, Alvizuri still looked reasonably fit, according to descriptions and photos. He was a handsome man with a bright smile and strong Incan features.

However, like many people with AIDS, he thought often about death, and also suicide.

“Every time somebody would die, he’d say, ‘Why wasn’t it my time?’ “said Alfonso Green, an attendant at the shelter.

The beginning of the end apparently started last Friday with a small incident that was violent only to those accustomed to the quiet of the household. Alvizuri went to the front of the home and cut a string surrounding a patch of grass newly planted by another resident. He challenged the other resident to do something about it.

It was a small but telling assault. “A threat,” Anderson said. She was away when the incident happened; co-workers paged her. When she arrived minutes later, she said, Alvizuri told her he had voices in his head telling him to kill himself.

To Anderson, who has had 20 years of experience running shelters for AIDS patients, alcohol and drug victims and others, the symptoms of paranoia were classic. Alvizuri was suffering from toxoplasmosis, a condition that affects the brain and sometimes attacks AIDS patients.

There were no radical changes in his behavior that signaled he was a genuine threat to others, Anderson said. Dementia is common in AIDS. In the latter stage of AIDS, patients afflicted by toxoplasmosis commonly demonstrate alternate waves of delusion and clear thinking.

Still, Anderson told herself, delusions always worsen; soon Alvizuri would have to move into a hospital setting.

That afternoon, she talked with him and he came out of it, admitted his error, promised to call her or a staff member if he felt that way again, and apologized to his fellow resident. The next morning, keeping his promise, he called her at home.

She went over with a bilingual counselor, and for two hours they talked about the delusions. But she saw a look on Alvizuri’s face--a look she could only describe Wednesday as terror that told her the paranoia was worsening. She wanted to reach out and hold him, but couldn’t do that with paranoia.

The next night, unbeknown to anyone at the shelter, Alvizuri called an acquaintance in Glendora, a bus driver named Juan Arce, and told him, frantically, that he needed to see him.

Arce was puzzled. Alvizuri was an acquaintance, not a close friend, with whom he used to play soccer. He made the long drive, anyway.

When Arce arrived, Alvizuri, whom he knew as “Guido,” told him he was the only one he could trust. He said other residents were poisoning his food, and the CIA was after him because he thought it was in America that “God had lost the battle to the devil.”

“The police have their helicopters circling over me with lights searching for me, too,” he said.

Then he stopped cold.

“I am going to kill myself,” he said. “I am living in hell.” He handed Arce an envelope he said he wanted made public after his death.

But Arce reasoned with him, and later said he thought he had talked him out of his odd fears. Asked to promise he wouldn’t kill himself, Alvizuri told Arce, “I will give it two more days.”

When Arce called back the following day, he seemed better. The crisis, he thought, had passed.

When she arrived at work Monday morning, Anderson began a search she had conducted before--a search for a permanent place for a terminal patient to go to die. She wanted to avoid committing him to a state hospital, where he would spend his last days in what she thought of as an army-green isolation room. So, knowing the system, she called colleagues, and arranged for an appointment at County-USC Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon for both physical and mental examinations.

About 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, she told him he was going.

“You’re not a witch, are you?” he asked, startling her slightly. He began telling her he thought the staff was practicing santeria , or black magic, plotting against him with other residents.

“No,” she said. “I don’t practice black magic. I believe in a real, loving God.”

He told her about a dream he had had in which he imagined God was sitting, invisible, in judgment of him for having contracted AIDS.

“That’s not the God I know,” she said.

“I’m going to the hospital to die, aren’t I?” he asked.

“No, you’re going to get better--they’ll give you some medication so you won’t feel so bad inside,” she said. “Why don’t you get your things together now?”

As he got up and went inside, she told a co-worker, sadly, “He will be the next.”

She meant the next to die. She had noticed that the terror on his face had changed into acceptance. But it wasn’t the look of peace she had seen on men who had decided to take their own lives, either.

Minutes later, Alvizuri called out from the kitchen to Green, the shelter attendant. Green left the garage that had been converted into a recreation room and office and went inside.

Alvizuri was standing by the refrigerator.

“Dance!” he commanded, and fired what appeared to be a popgun toward the floor. Green held his ears, went outside and told Anderson.

“I think he’s got a popgun,” he said.

Anderson went inside and upstairs to Alvizuri’s room.

“Alberto!” she called.

“Get out of here!” he called back through the closed door.

His tone of voice frightened her. It wasn’t threatening, but warning--warning her to get out of the way of danger. Suddenly, she knew the gun was real. She evacuated the house, grabbed a portable phone, and dialed 911 as she ran outside.

Only later would she find out that he had somehow brought in a 9-millimeter pistol and 100 rounds of ammunition.

Arce was on his way to work when he heard the news on the radio that someone was shooting at a police helicopter in the neighborhood of the shelter.

Guido? he wondered.

He called from the bus station, asking the operator for police and tried to tell officers what he feared. But he found himself transferred from one police station to another without finding anyone who knew of the incident. Finally, he gave up and started on his route.

Earlier, McDermott, who not only administers the archdiocese’s two AIDS shelters but is also an adviser to the county Board of Supervisors on mental health, had testified before the board, arguing against new cutbacks in mental health.

Shortly after he left the hearing, he was paged by Anderson and told of the unfolding situation. He was stunned. He had never heard of a case involving AIDS--even one in which the brain had been affected--that had ended in violence.

There are only two ends to this, Alberto, he thought. Either the police will kill you, or you will kill yourself.

When McDermott drove up to the neighborhood, there were barricades outside the once-quiet house, the SWAT team had taken cover in neighboring houses.

About 6 p.m. police fired 18 tear gas canisters through the windows in the old home. About 6:30 p.m., police believe, Alvizuri fired a single shot into his temple.

It was dark by the time McDermott and Anderson were allowed back into the shelter. A wall of television camera spotlights cast an unreal blue-white light against the house, making it look like a movie set.

Neighbors stood staring at the house, huddled against the chill night air, mothers with children leaning up against them for warmth and reassurance.

What can I say to assuage their fears? McDermott asked himself. Nothing. Just that I’m sorry, and thank God nobody else was hurt. This is a human tragedy, but it’s Alberto’s tragedy.

The next night, after Arce had read the newspaper account of his friend’s death, he opened the letter Alvizuri had given him. In it, he said he had already paid for his cremation, and asked that his ashes be scattered at sea.

Death, he said, was like a mountain. “My God,” the letter began. “I am sorry because I am taking away your work of art--life . . . Because the mountain did not come to me, I am going to the mountain.”