Youth Planned Ambush in Officer’s Death, Police Say : Violence: Friend says he tried to talk teen-ager out of rampage. ‘Insanity is fun,’ dead youth reportedly said.

When 17-year-old Christopher Golly fatally shot a rookie police officer after killing his father, he was carrying out an ambush that he planned and discussed the day before, Los Angeles police and a friend of the dead youth said Wednesday.

Just hours before the shooting, the young gunman, a heavy methamphetamine user, described his mental state to his best friend. “Insanity is fun,” the friend quoted him as saying.

The remark was made during one of several conversations on the afternoon and evening preceding the attack in which Golly made “specific threats” that he planned to kill his father, Steven Golly, 49, and then wage “a gun battle” with officers called to the scene, Police Lt. Daniel Lang said.

But officers did not know about the threats when they were called about 1:20 a.m. Tuesday to the Northridge neighborhood where Golly had just shot his father to death using a military-style semiautomatic rifle. A gun enthusiast, Steven Golly had given the weapon to his son so they could share a common interest, according to a family friend.

As Christopher Golly was gunning down his father, the song “The End”--in which Jim Morrison of the rock group the Doors fantasized about killing his father--was playing on the stereo, said witnesses who were in the house at the time.

Then, in a bloody scene that played out precisely as police say the younger Golly had threatened, he opened fire on six officers arriving to investigate a report of shots fired inside the house.

Golly was waiting with an AR-15-type assault rifle behind a block wall, said Lang, the officer in charge of the LAPD’s Major Crimes Investigations Section.

Killed in the spray of at least 14 shots was police rookie Christy Lynne Hamilton, 45, struck by a shot through an armhole in her bulletproof vest, which had been a gift from her mother. She became the second female Los Angeles police officer to die in the line of duty.

The youth then retreated to the house and shot himself to death with a .22-caliber handgun, police said.

Investigators learned that the teen-ager “had made specific threats that he was going to kill a police officer,” said Lt. John Dunkin, a police spokesman. But he said that police only became aware of the threats after Hamilton was killed.

If police had known about the threats, Dunkin said, “we would have tried to locate and talk to him well before this situation.”

One of the last people Christopher Golly talked with was Matt Conner, 18, who described himself as Golly’s best friend.

Conner told The Times that he talked with Golly at the Northridge house about 9 p.m. Monday. “He said he was going to take the assault rifle and shoot (his father),” Conner said.

“He said he (planned) on taking a couple people with him. He wanted to take out a cop, and a cop car,” Conner said.

“ ‘Gee, Matt, insanity is fun,’ ” Conner quoted Golly as saying at the time.

Conner said he persuaded Golly to “promise on our friendship” that he would not shoot anyone.

A message written in black marker pen on Golly’s bedroom wall when a reporter entered it Wednesday said: “Friends & Butt-head made me do this hah-hah. Tell Matt I said, ‘Sorry.’ ”

Police said Conner volunteered his statements before investigators left the shooting scene Tuesday morning.

Susan Bever, the live-in girlfriend of Steven Golly, said in an interview that Christopher had been particularly depressed since a Feb. 14 marijuana conviction that led to suspension of his driver’s license.

Early Tuesday morning, the constant throb of the bass from the boy’s stereo could be clearly heard in the couple’s bedroom, Bever said. Then, about 1 a.m., the volume increased. She said the song “The End” was playing.

Steven Golly got out of bed. Bever heard him open his son’s door and angrily ask what was going on. There was a “pop” sound and a flash of light, she recalled.

“I knew it was a gun,” Bever said, adding that Steven Golly fell face forward onto the floor. He had been shot once.

The 17-year-old then calmly asked Bever, Bever’s son Aaron and Aaron’s girlfriend, Connie McGovern, to leave the house. The three obeyed, and McGovern said she took a cordless telephone with her. From outside, McGovern called 911.

Police said Golly fired at least 14 shots at two squad cars, including two at Hamilton’s cruiser. But they said it was too dark for him to be aiming at any particular officer.

Hamilton’s mother, Marge Hoffberg, the ex-wife of an LAPD detective, said she wanted her daughter to become a teacher rather than a police officer because she remembered the 17 years she had spent worrying whether her husband was safe.

Despite her apprehensions, Hoffberg said she was proud when Hamilton graduated from the Police Academy on Friday.

“She realized a dream that she had,” Hoffberg said. “She did what she had to do.”

Hoffberg said she bought the bulletproof vest because her daughter could not afford all the equipment needed for police training.

“I wanted her chest protected,” Hoffberg said. “I wanted to do something to save her life if she ever needed it.”

Steven Golly’s business partner and friend of 30 years, Yo Hasegawa, said Steven and his son often went target practicing and that the AR-15 was one of their favorite weapons.

Friends and Golly family members said the shooting culminated a deterioration of the teen-ager’s attitude, touched off, they believe, by the death of Christopher’s mother of a cocaine overdose four years ago.

Times staff writers Miguel Bustillo, David Colker, Chip Johnson, Chou Lam and Ann W. O’Neill contributed to this story.