‘A Terrible Shock’ : Violence: Manhattan Beach is stunned by the city’s first slaying of a police officer. Investigators say they have received many tips but are far from solving the case.

On many a day, the most violent action in affluent Manhattan Beach is the spiking of beach volleyballs.

And so it is that residents of the close-knit community are recoiling in shock and horror this week in the wake of the city’s first slaying of a police officer--Martin Ganz, 29, killed Monday night while making a traffic stop outside the Manhattan Village shopping mall.

“Everyone I talk to just can’t believe it,” said Mayor Steve Napolitano, as he sat in his ocean view City Hall office at noon Wednesday, dressed in shorts and a professional volleyball T-shirt. “They don’t want to believe something of this nature can happen here.

“It never has happened here before. Now it has and it’s a terrible shock.”

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The last Manhattan Beach policeman to die on duty was Motorcycle Officer Richard T. Giles, who crashed into a car while chasing a speeder in 1962. The last homicide in the city of 32,000 residents occurred more than a decade ago, according to authorities.

The Manhattan Beach Police Department does not even have a homicide unit. The Ganz case is being handled by the sheriff’s Homicide Bureau.

Ganz, a five-year veteran of the 59-member city police force, was shot at least three times by a motorist he had pulled over for unknown reasons. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, coroner’s officials revealed Wednesday.

The gunman began firing at Ganz as the officer approached the door of his car, investigators said. Ganz retreated behind his black-and-white, but the gunman followed on foot and fired several more shots. Ganz did not return fire and his service revolver was found on the ground near him.

A source in the Manhattan Beach Police Department said Wednesday that Ganz may have been unable to discharge his weapon because he had been struck in the shoulder during the first round of gunfire.

One bullet was stopped by Ganz’s bulletproof vest, sheriff’s spokesman Robert Stoneman said. Stoneman declined comment on the report of the shoulder wound.

As the gunman walked back toward his car after shooting Ganz in the head, he also pointed his semiautomatic weapon at the officer’s 13-year-old nephew, who was on a ride-along in the police car, authorities said. However, the gunman did not pull the trigger.

Ganz’s nephew and another witness described the gunman as a dark-haired, Asian man in his late 20s or early 30s, driving a small gray or silver hatchback car.

Despite the physical descriptions and a pair of similar-looking composite sketches, deputies said they were far from solving the case Wednesday. But not because of a lack of community support, they added.

“The city has really bonded together,” said veteran Manhattan Beach Officer Sandy Rogoff.

By midday Wednesday, investigators had received dozens of tips from motorists, late-night mall shoppers and even an interior decorator who pointed out that the bright floodlights in the shopping mall parking lot may have made the gunman’s car appear a different color than it really was.

The Manhattan Beach City Council, meeting in emergency session, approved a $25,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the gunman. That figure was matched by an anonymous donor, bringing the total reward to $50,000.

Meanwhile, more than 100 bouquets and wreaths were placed on the sidewalk outside a tile-roofed Bank of America, a few feet from the bloodstained pavement where the officer fell.

“We live here to get away from it all, but I guess you can’t escape crime--it creeps into your neighborhood,” said Maureen Beers, a five-year resident of the city who had taken her young daughters to view the floral arrangements Wednesday morning. “It was a pretty isolated incident but it’s amazing how many people do carry guns.”

To many residents, the village-like city represents the last vestige of the California Dream as made popular by the 1960s music of the Beach Boys, themselves natives of neighboring Hawthorne who spent their teen summers on the sands of Manhattan Beach.

It is a community where during the week before New Year’s Day, hundreds of surfers, beach volleyball players and sun worshipers frolic at the ocean. It is also a community that has become isolated from the increasing ethnic diversity of Los Angeles County. With a population that is 89.6% white, according to the 1990 census, Manhattan Beach ranks as the whitest city in Los Angeles County.

“I work in South-Central Los Angeles and this may not have the same effect on me as some people that don’t get out of their neighborhood,” said longtime resident Bette Mower, a Los Angeles city schoolteacher, between volleyball games on the beach at Marine Avenue. “It might be an eye-opener for residents that no one is immune (from crime).”

The Ganz killing “kind of breaks in on your false sense of security,” said resident Bret Johnson, a recent college graduate, as he left the Bank of America office at the Manhattan Village.

“It makes me think twice about driving up and telling someone that no dogs are allowed on the beach,” said county lifeguard Mike Inscore, as he watered down his surf ski next to the lifeguard station at Marine Avenue. “No place or job is safe.”

At Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in downtown Manhattan Beach, the counter has been ablaze with discussion of the shooting. The only local law enforcement news that has drawn this kind of attention was the McMartin Pre-School child abuse case which, after years of court hearings, concluded in 1990 with the exoneration of all defendants.

“Some people feel really bad,” said waitress Erin Melikdse. “But some customers have made me real mad because they said it’s the policeman’s fault because he wasn’t following procedures. That’s garbage, that doesn’t mean he should have been shot.”

Although it is the policy of the Manhattan Beach Police Department to radio in license numbers of vehicles they have stopped, Ganz did not do so in this case, according to sheriff’s spokesman Stoneman.

A memorial service for Ganz, a Garden Grove native survived by his mother and five sisters, has been set for 10:30 a.m. Monday at American Martyrs Catholic Church near downtown Manhattan Beach. The service will be preceded by a visitation from 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday afternoon at the White and Day Chapel of the Good Shepherd in Manhattan Beach.

Interment at Inglewood Memorial Park will follow Monday’s memorial service.