IRVINE : Police Search Yields No Proof of Gunfire

Responding to reports of possible gunfire, police searched a cluster of office towers Thursday morning but could find no evidence of either a sniper or gunshots.

More than a dozen police officers converged on the Jamboree Center business park about 9:30 a.m. when three witnesses reported hearing a popping sound they described as gunfire.

Police at first suspected that it might be the work of a sniper because one witness said she saw someone standing on the roof of one office tower holding a “straight object” that resembled a rifle.

But after a two-hour search of the area near Jamboree Road and Main Street, police officers said they doubted a shooting had occurred.

“We have no evidence of anything,” Lt. Mike White said. “We’ve found no shell casings or anything to indicate a shooting.”

No buildings were evacuated in Jamboree Center, which houses several office towers and a Hyatt hotel.

Five SWAT team members clad in bulletproof vests and armed with rifles searched one building across the street from Jamboree Center.

The shooting was first reported just after 9 a.m. by Bonnie Cleland, 47, of Huntington Beach. Cleland and a friend had come to Irvine to attend a Bible-study conference at the Hyatt hotel.

They had just parked in a lot across the street from the hotel when they heard eight pops.

“We first thought they were shooting an animal or something,” Cleland said. “It was very scary.”

Cleland said she noticed a figure holding “something like a stick” on the roof of a building across the street from Jamboree Center. “It could have been a gun,” she said. “It’s really not pleasant to hear gunfire and not know where it’s coming from.”

Police received a second call from someone who also reported hearing the sound of gunfire.

Officers speculated that the popping sound might have come from a car backfiring and that the man on the roof could have been a window washer.