Hansel Enters Not-Guilty Plea in Shootings : Crime: Suspected gunman in rampage that killed two executives is held without bail.

Larry T. Hansel pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of killing two executives during a shooting rampage at Elgar Corp., and a prosecutor said additional charges of attempted murder could be lodged against him before trial.

Hansel, 41, showed no emotion when Municipal Judge Larry Stirling asked how he pleaded to the charges against him. He answered “not guilty” in a barely audible voice. Stirling ordered Hansel held without bail.

San Diego police homicide detectives have said Hansel confessed freely to the Tuesday shootings and has been cooperative during their interrogations of him.

He drove to Palm Desert and surrendered to Riverside County sheriff’s deputies a few hours after the shootings. Riverside deputies said Hansel told them he had killed “several people” in San Diego.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregg McClain said Hansel was being held on three charges: two counts of murder, detonating incendiary devices and burglary. The burglary charge stems from Hansel’s unlawful entry into the Elgar plant with intent to commit murder, McClain said.

Hansel, an electronics technician, was laid off from Elgar in March. The company manufactures power systems for computers. Police said he returned to the Miramar plant Tuesday, armed with a shotgun, three Molotov cocktails and three remote-controlled bombs.

Police said Hansel was upset about having been laid off and intended to shoot six Elgar executives. John Jones, 48, vice president and general manager, and Michael Krowitz, 46, a regional sales manager, were shot several times with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Jones was the only one of Hansel’s six intended targets who was killed. The other five were not harmed. Krowitz, who was not on Hansel’s hit list, and Jones were killed in the same cubicle, investigators said.

McClain said the double homicide makes Hansel eligible for the death penalty. However, the prosecutor said that Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller had not yet decided whether prosecutors will seek it.

If Hansel is interested in a plea bargain, prosecutors will insist on a guilty plea on the two murder charges, McClain added.

“If he were to plead guilty today, he would be looking at 30 years to life,” McClain said.

In arguing against bail for Hansel, McClain reminded Stirling that Hansel killed only one of the six executives he sought.

“If the defendant were ever released, these individuals would be in jeopardy,” McClain said. “ . . . The people who were fearing for their lives there were the four or five executives he was also looking for.”

According to a police account of the attack, Hansel also detonated two remote-controlled bombs inside the Elgar plant, causing small fires. The Molotov cocktails and a third remote-controlled bomb were placed at various spots outside the building and did not explode.

Homicide Lt. Dan Berglund said Hansel planned the attack against the company and its employees, and carried it out with methodical precision. After the assault, he calmly pedaled away on a bicycle, which he then put in the back of his nearby pickup truck and drove to Palm Desert, police said.

It is the placing of the six explosive devices inside and outside the building that could lead to attempted-murder charges. Although prosecutors are still studying the case, McClain said, the explosives may have been deliberately placed in areas where they could have hurt some of the company’s more than 200 employees if detonated.

“Depending on the layout of the building and places where the devices were found, there could be intent-to-murder charges brought against Hansel,” he said.

During his brief court appearance, Hansel looked straight ahead, looking neither at his wife, Maria, nor a man believed to be a relative, who were sitting in the courtroom with attorney Ron Frant. The unidentified man and Maria Hansel, who works in financial aid administration at San Diego State University, declined to talk to reporters.

Frant, a veteran defense attorney, said he was retained by Maria Hansel. He said she had been besieged by media requests for interviews.

“My job is to look out for her interests, and that includes keeping the press away from her for now,” Frant said.

Judge Stirling appointed the San Diego County public defender’s office to represent Hansel. Attorney Alex Loebig Jr. was assigned to head the defense; however, Loebig was not in court Thursday, and Hansel was instead represented by Curt Lee Owen, also of the public defender’s office.

The victims’ families did not appear at the hearing.

Company officials held a memorial service for Krowitz on Thursday afternoon at El Camino Memorial Park, close to the Elgar office, and a similar service will be held for Jones at the same location Saturday morning.

Company officials said fewer than a dozen people out of the work force of 300 did not show up for work Thursday. A team of seven psychologists held two early-morning counseling sessions “to discuss the symptoms of numbness people were feeling,” and each was attended by more than 100 people, a company spokeswoman said.

During the day, the psychologists visited employees throughout the building and were going to set up meetings sometime in the future for a group of people “who were close to the scene (of the shooting) and felt badly that they didn’t do more to help,” spokeswoman Catherine Wambach said.

“The psychologists told the workers that the best thing is for people to fall into normal work patterns and deal with their emotions rather than sit home and feel bad,” she said.

The team of counselors will be available for the next two weeks and will also aid in counseling the victims’ families and Hansel’s wife and children.

Wambach said company officials continued to question the response time of police to the shooting. She said Janet Krowitz, Mike Krowitz’s widow, was very upset with police because the company’s president said there was a 27-minute delay from the time someone called after the shooting until police arrived.

Police officials say it took 14 minutes between the time the call came in and officers entered the building, including an eight-minute delay while officers huddled half a block from the building to plan strategy.

Assistant Police Chief Norm Stamper said an internal investigation of the incident has not ended, but he said he is satisfied with the response time.