Man Gunned Down in Front of Home : Crime: The Dana Point landscape architect had just returned from the grocery store.

A 35-year-old Dana Point man was shot and killed on his driveway in the latest of three weekend shootings in South County.

The typical calm of neat, quiet Diana Drive was interrupted at about 9:30 p.m. Sunday, first by a loud argument, then by gunshots and finally by the screams of the victim’s fiancee when she discovered the body, witnesses said.

Lloyd Dennis Shields, a landscape architect, was shot four times at close range in front of his home. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

Witnesses and neighbors said Shields had returned home from the store and had just gotten out of his Chevrolet Blazer when he was confronted by the gunman. A loud shouting match erupted. Minutes later, four gunshots rang out, and Shields slumped over on the driveway, a bag of groceries still in his hand.

“I had come home and gotten ready to go to bed, and then I heard an argument on the street,” said Connie Bailey, who lives directly across the street in the city’s Lantern Village neighborhood.

“I was getting ready to call the police to report the noise, and then I heard a shot, a pause, and then several more shots.”

Witnesses told police that the gunman had parked his car just across the street from Shields’ home and apparently was waiting for him to return. Immediately after the shooting, Shields’ fiancee ran outside and began screaming, witnesses said.

Witnesses described the gunman as about 5 foot 8 and 180 pounds, wearing a dark shirt. He drove away in a blue or brown car described as a Dodge or Datsun, police said.

Shields had been a resident of Diana Drive for at least a dozen years, and his only known relative was a mother in Pennsylvania who died recently, a neighbor said.

Neighbors described Shields as a tall, good-looking man who was well-known by other Diana Drive residents. He ran two businesses from his blue and beige two-story duplex: a landscape architectural business called California Landscape Concepts and a small hanging chair business called Just Hanging Out, neighbors said.

“He worked on the balcony of his house on sunny days, doing designs,” said Brad Jensen, 19, another neighbor who often worked for Shields. “I worked for him on several jobs. He was a really good guy to work for.”

Lt. Richard J. Olson, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, said investigators were working on several leads but had no suspects in custody late Monday.

The shooting Sunday night was the third in two days in the South County. Two other men were shot, one fatally, Saturday night during a party on the beach near Aliso Pier in South Laguna, authorities said.

Those shootings were not considered related to the Dana Point incident.