Roving Gunman Kills 8, Self in S.F. High-Rise : Rampage: Unidentified killer apparently had specific victims at law firm, authorities say.

Lugging a black canvas satchel full of ammunition, handguns and a police scanner, a man roamed through four floors of a high-rise building in the financial district Thursday spraying bullets as he went, killing eight people and wounding six others before shooting himself to death as police moved in, officials and witnesses said.

Firing “in six-bullet bursts” from two 9-millimeter pistols and a .45-caliber semiautomatic, the heavyset man in a white dress shirt and suspenders first shot up an occupied conference room, then prowled through several floors housing the headquarters of the Pettit & Martin law firm. Employees dived under desks, shoved furniture up against office doors, hurried down stairwells, and crammed into elevators to descend to the streets.

Attorney Sharon L. O’Grady was walking down a hall on the 34th floor when she saw the middle-aged, dark-haired man. “I looked at him for a second to see if he worked here, and all of a sudden he started shooting,” she said. “Someone screamed and I ran without looking back.”

The gunman’s name was not released Thursday. San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan said his motive was unknown, but called him a “very practiced” marksman who “appeared to have designs on certain people” in the law firm, a comment not confirmed by police.

“At this point, we think the individual must have known someone, I think he was going after someone on the 34th floor at the Pettit & Martin law firm,” said Jordan.

Among the dead, sources said, were a Pettit & Martin partner, an associate and a law clerk at the firm, which has offices in Los Angeles, Washington, Newport Beach, Hong Kong and San Jose.

The associate, Hawaiian-born John Scully, 28, was confirmed dead. His wife, Michelle, 27, also a lawyer, had stopped by his office when the gunfire erupted shortly before 3 p.m. Mrs. Scully was wounded, and her husband died trying to protect her, a radio station reported.

Six people and the gunman died inside the 48-story high-rise on California Street near the Embarcadero waterfront, said Dr. Charles Saunders, director of paramedics at San Francisco General Hospital. Two others were dead when they arrived at the hospital, he said.

Several bodies, including the gunman’s, lay in the building for hours as police searched floor by floor. They were tracking reports of a second gunman, but found only terrified employees like Glenn Woodman, a controller for San Francisco Satellite Center, who hid for hours behind file cabinets in a storeroom when the announcement of a “building emergency” came over the public address system. “You don’t know when the bullets are gonna fly,” he said later.

Police had believed there to be a second gunman in part because of the “magnitude of the assault,” said police spokesman Dave Ambrose, and because of a 911 call about a woman held hostage on the 32nd floor, a call that came more than an hour after the gunman shot himself to death. Amrose said later the 911 call appeared to be a hoax.

Police found the unidentified gunman’s body in a stairwell between the 29th and 30th floors. He had put the gun barrel under his chin and shot himself as officers approached, police said. What officers had first thought was a walkie-talkie carried by the gunman turned out to be a police scanner.

The shootings sent ripples of fear through the city’s financial district. After the gunman was first spotted in the high-rise, office workers in nearby buildings were advised to stay away from windows, close blinds and leave by rear exits. The cable car line on California Street was shut down. A nearby BART subway station was also closed briefly.

California Atty. Gen. Dan Lundgren had eaten lunch on the 35th floor of the law firm but had left an hour before the shooting began at about 3 p.m., his spokesman said.

As police searched floor by floor, reassuring people who had been hiding for hours that it was safe, workers fled to the street where their families waited, embracing them, sometimes weeping, in the late summer light.

O’Grady, who joined colleagues huddled among police, paramedics and onlookers on the street below, said she ran down a stairway to the 33rd floor and hid in an empty room. “Then I realized that wasn’t a very good place to be,” she said, “so I ran out, pushed the elevator button, held my breath when the doors opened, got in and rode down.”

Attorney Tia Miyamoto heard the shots and picked up her secretary’s phone to dial security when she realized that the gunman was walking down the hall toward her.

As her colleagues scattered, she dived under the desk, taking the phone receiver with her. “When I got under there, I realized I’d done a very stupid thing,” she recalled, nursing a beer at a nearby bar and worrying about her colleagues.

“He could have seen the phone cord, followed it down and shot me.” Instead, he walked by; she saw his pants legs moving and heard his “heavy breathing, like he was very excited.”

“I realized this could be it. . . . I thought if this guy sees me, he’s got a gun and he’ll just shoot me,” Miyamoto said. She waited a minute, and as fire alarms rang, ran down the stairs to the 26th floor and rode the elevator to the ground.

D. Wayne Jeffries, a partner in the large general practice firm, said he heard that the gunman had been in a deposition in a 34th-floor conference room when he left briefly and returned with the weapon.

Thomas F. Kostic, a partner in the firm, was talking to someone in an office next door to the conference room when the shooting started. “He had been in Vietnam and he knew the sound,” Kostic said. Everyone got down and they shoved a couch against the locked door, he said. “I could smell the gunsmoke.”

Another lawyer with the firm, Chuck Ehrlich, was in a 33rd-floor conference room for a client meeting when they “heard noises that sounded like workmen hammering above our heads.”

The meeting ended, and at the elevators they “suddenly saw all these people from 34 fleeing,” Ehrlich said. “They were screaming. We got on and rode down. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m going to send more money to gun control groups. It’s not the fault of building security. They can’t search everyone.”

Ten floors below the shooting, Jeanne Wohler of Woodside was attending an investment seminar at Merrill Lynch when the announcement warning tenants to “make sure your floors are locked” came over the public address system, she said. “At that point, we thought it wasn’t a big deal, so we continued with our seminar.”

Later, a worker said “a gunman was running loose in the building,” Wohler said. “We all left at that point, 50 or 75 of us on the elevators.”

One unidentified witness told radio station KCBS that the man was carrying a semiautomatic gun when he was spotted in the emergency stairwell. “I went halfway down the stairs to look and see what was going on and he came into that staircase at 34, and I backed up very quietly,” the man said.

Deanne Eaves, 33, a court reporter for the firm of Combs & Greenley, told her husband she was taking a deposition on the 34th floor when the man burst in and started firing, said Roy Eaves. She ducked behind a chair, but was hit in the arm.

Besides Scully, Debra Fogel, 33, was killed, according to hospital officials. Michelle Scully was wounded and in serious condition. In critical condition were Sharon Jones O’Roke, and Brian Berger, 39, a new partner with Pettit & Martin. In serious condition was Vicki Smith, 41. Charles Ross, 42, also a Pettit & Martin employee, was wounded but his condition was not listed.

Warren reported from San Francisco, Morrison from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock and researcher Norma Kaufman in San Francisco contributed to this story.