Gunman Described as ‘Quiet, Polite’

The Woodland Hills gunman who shot up a San Francisco law firm was videotaped target shooting two weeks ago by another Woodland Hills man, who recalled the gunman Wednesday as “a quiet and polite guy” who disliked attorneys.

Gian Luigi Ferri also tried to adjust a semiautomatic pistol to make it shoot faster, the man who videotaped him said.

The 41-year-old amateur cameraman asked not to be identified because he didn’t want his name associated with last Thursday’s tragedy, in which eight died and six were wounded before Ferri shot himself to death.

The cameraman, a gun enthusiast, said he met Ferri at two gun shows in Las Vegas and Anaheim in May before they went target shooting in the Mojave Desert.

“I just met him on a couple of occasions and just remember him as a big, heavyset man,” he recalled. “He just seemed like a quiet and polite guy. He really didn’t talk much. I couldn’t tell that he was unstable.”

On June 18, the cameraman and a friend went with Ferri to the desert north of Los Angeles and met for breakfast before the hourlong target practice.

“I went to the restroom and he (Ferri) was talking to my buddy and he told him he didn’t like attorneys,” the cameraman said in a telephone interview.

He said Ferri brought two 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols to the practice. He remembers jokingly asking Ferri if he was “going to play Steven Seagal in “Under Siege.” In the action movie, Seagal portrays a one-man army fighting terrorists who take over a nuclear warship.

The cameraman said it appeared that Ferri, 55, had some knowledge of firearms and shot about 100 to 150 rounds at empty food cans they had set up for practice.

“He was trying to adjust the hellfire switch that makes it shoot a little faster,” he said.

Ferri’s rampage 13 days later in a San Francisco high-rise office building began at the law firm Pettit & Martin, where some of the victims worked. A frustrated businessman, Ferri left a rambling letter blaming food additives, the law firm and others for his woes.