Attorneys Say Sniper Aimed at MCA’s Image

An angry former employee accused of shooting into the headquarters of the entertainment conglomerate MCA, injuring seven workers, was no madman bent on murder but only wanted to “punch some holes in MCA’s corporate image,” defense attorneys said Thursday.

In fact, John Brian Jarvis mistakenly believed that the 15-story “Black Tower” in Universal City was covered by bulletproof glass and told detectives after his arrest, “I hope I didn’t hit anyone,” Deputy Public Defender Alan Sharpe said.

But a skeptical Municipal Court Judge Michael T. Sauer denied a defense request to dismiss seven of the 16 felony counts against Jarvis, and ordered Jarvis bound over to Superior Court for trial.

“In this case one must consider the totality of circumstances,” Sauer said at a 90-minute preliminary hearing in downtown Los Angeles.

“A person firing into an office building on a workday will very likely hit someone.”

Sauer set arraignment for June 10 and kept Jarvis’ bail at $1 million.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn said later that he would discuss the possibility of a plea agreement with defense attorneys. If convicted on all 16 counts, Jarvis, 58, could face more than 20 years in state prison, Conn said.

Jarvis, who has pleaded not guilty, has been held in Los Angeles County Jail since his arrest April 20, when he calmly surrendered to police after allegedly positioning himself on Bluffside Drive and peppering MCA’s headquarters and a neighboring Bank of America building with three dozen rounds from a high-powered 7-millimeter rifle.

Jarvis later told police that MCA had blackballed him, causing his chronic unemployment.

Witnesses described the 10 a.m. attack as surreal because the gunman seemed placid and ignored passersby, who continued to mill about the company grounds and only gradually realized there was a sniper among them.

Although initial news reports described the gunman as alternately firing at the building and swigging from a bottle of bourbon, Jarvis’ attorneys on Thursday said it was a container of water from which he drank.

The fusillade of bullets aimed at the MCA tower struck two women, wounding them in the shoulder and arm. Five others were injured by flying shards of glass and metal.

All seven secretaries, whose desks were located near the building’s windows, are suffering emotional effects from the attack, and one still has a metal fragment lodged in the back of her head, Detective Jerry Stephens of the Los Angeles Police Department testified Thursday.

Stephens also testified that the barrage of bullets caused an estimated $150,000 in damage to the tower, whose distinctive black glass skin was pierced 21 times on nine floors, and more than $35,000 in damage to the nearby Bank of America building, where two windows were shattered.

Stephens, who interviewed Jarvis after his arrest and obtained a confession, testified that Jarvis said he had been thinking on and off for eight years about “shooting up” the MCA building, ever since he lost his job as a driver with the company.

Since then, Jarvis had been sharing an apartment with his mother in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Pleasanton. He was pushed over the edge after her death in March, Stephens testified, when he was left without a place to stay and began living out of his car.

Jarvis made up his mind then to finally carry out the attack and chose especially powerful ammunition, the detective said. On the Sunday before the Tuesday morning attack, he drove to Los Angeles, spending a night on the road.

On the morning of April 20, “he got up early, ate breakfast and drove to Bluffside Drive--choosing it for its good view of both the MCA and Bank of America buildings,” said Stephens, the only witness called to testify Thursday.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Sharpe, Stephens acknowledged that Jarvis told him he could not see inside the MCA building’s dark windows and that “I was not trying to hit anybody. . . . My intention was to punch some holes in MCA’s corporate image.”

Stephens also acknowledged that Jarvis expressed amazement at how “people just stood there watching” during the attack.

“ ‘I could’ve taken half a dozen people out there on the street. They were just standing there like cattle,’ ” Sharpe read from a transcript of the interview.

It was also revealed during cross-examination that the station wagon Jarvis drove to the scene contained a copy of the book “Dark Victory: MCA, Ronald Reagan and the Mob” and an unopened, returned letter Jarvis wrote to then-MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman in 1984. Sharpe contended after the hearing that MCA placed Jarvis’ name on a “don’t hire” list, and that the presence of the book showed that Jarvis was concerned by the company’s practices and was not trying to shoot anyone.

After the hearing, Sharpe and Deputy Public Defender Stephen E. Galindo said Jarvis believes that MCA executives targeted him as a troublemaker because he accused them of sexual harassment and nepotism in hiring practices.

Jarvis also believes his life is in danger, his defense attorneys said, characterizing him as sane but suffering from increasing stress. The charges they unsuccessfully tried to have dismissed Thursday are the most serious, alleging assault likely to produce great bodily injury.

“It’s just by the grace of God that someone wasn’t killed in that building,” Stephens said after the hearing.