SWAT Sharpshooters Kill Gunman After Long Siege : Standoff: After reportedly killing an acquaintance, man fires 150 rounds at officers and a police helicopter during the seven-hour drama.

Police sharpshooters early Wednesday fatally shot a man after he reportedly killed an acquaintance and then fired at police and a helicopter while barricading himself in a van for seven hours.

The gunman, who was not identified, fired more than 150 rounds throughout the night, police said. The siege ended when the man climbed atop his van through a vent and opened fire, and police shot and killed him.

Police Lt. Ed McErlain said police received a call at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday from a security guard at a recreational vehicle storage yard, who reported hearing gunfire moments earlier.

“He was lying on the floor (of his trailer) when he called us,” McErlain said. As the caller, whose name was not released, shouted for help, the gunman fired several rounds at his trailer.

A police helicopter and several patrol cars converged on the storage yard in the 700 block of Woodwind Drive, near the intersection of Slater Avenue and Gothard Street.

While the gunman fired volleys at the hovering helicopter, SWAT team members rescued the security guard and his son, McErlain said.

Officers then set up a perimeter outside the gunman’s delivery van, which was converted into a home. They tried to telephone him, McErlain said, but he wouldn’t answer. He also ignored police hostage negotiators who used a loudspeaker to try to talk him out of the van, police said.

The gunman occasionally popped his upper body out of a vent on top of the van and with a semiautomatic rifle fired rounds at police, who were hidden by nearby shadows. None of the officers or cars was hit, McErlain said.

At 4:30 a.m., McErlain said, police issued a warning and then fired a tear gas canister into the van, but it failed to fill the vehicle up with gas. At that point, the gunman climbed on top of the van from the vent and fired additional shots before diving back to safety.

About an hour later, the gunman re-emerged on the roof and fired a “rapid succession” of shots at SWAT team members, McErlain said.

But this time, several SWAT team officers opened fire. The gunman died at the scene.

A short time later, officers searching the area found the body of a second man lying next to a long trailer, apparently the victim of the gunman.

McErlain said he did not know what the relationship was between two dead men, but said they both lived in the recreational vehicle storage yard, located in an industrial area near Huntington Central Park.

“At this point, the investigation is in its infant stage,” McErlain said. “But it looks like that second person was shot by the suspect.”

McErlain said Special Weapons and Tactics team members “are trained to be specialists in this type of situation. They did their job today.”

As part of a regional agreement, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office were called to investigate the officer-involved shooting, the third such shooting in the county this year.

The last occurred Jan. 6, when Garden Grove police officers investigating a sexual assault at a market parking lot opened fire on a man who was spotted carrying a pistol.

Three days earlier, California Highway Patrol officers in Westminster shot and killed a suspect who had led police on a wild 300-mile chase from Merced County to the Golden West Street off-ramp.