Police Focus on Gun Victim’s Ex-Employees : Investigation: Family and friends grieve for Irvine man slain at 30 on his ninth wedding anniversary. His widow calls him the perfect husband and father.

As police focused their investigation Sunday on former employees of slain Irvine businessman Gregory Hebdon, family and friends grieved for a man they described as a devoted husband and father.

A distraught Lillian Hebdon, widow of the 30-year-old victim, who was shot and killed on his ninth wedding anniversary Friday, called her husband a kind and loving man whose wife and two children always came first.

“His family was the most important thing in life for him,” Lillian Hebdon said. “He always said he’d never let anything happen to us.”

Gregory Hebdon, co-owner of Servpro of Irvine, a business that restores homes and businesses damaged by water or fire, was fatally shot in the head and chest outside his Woodbridge townhome about 12:50 p.m. Friday, police said. Authorities are seeking two men who fled the scene in a cream-colored or white Lexus four-door sedan.

Neighbors said they heard several shots and a man scream “No! No! No!” before seeing Lillian Hebdon run to her husband, crying hysterically. Gregory Hebdon was found near death beneath his Toyota Land Cruiser, which was parked in an alley behind the home on East Yale Loop. His death was the first homicide in Irvine this year.

Irvine Police Chief Charles S. Brobeck said Sunday that investigators were narrowing leads and had asked law enforcement officials throughout Southern California for assistance in determining the whereabouts of potential suspects.

Brobeck said authorities are focusing on individuals who once worked for the victim, but stressed that the investigation is ongoing. “I would not rule out a possible employee,” Brobeck said. “That would automatically be a first suspect,” given the circumstances of the crime, he said.

“But I think it’s a wait-and-see right now,” Brobeck said.

Servpro business manager Mike Macy said he could not believe anyone who knew or worked for Gregory Hebdon could kill him. “No one who knew him could do something like this,” Macy said. “He was just the nicest, nicest guy to everyone.”

Irvine police returned Sunday to the Hebdons’ home, where they spoke with Lillian Hebdon and friends who were present.

In an interview, Lillian Hebdon called her husband “perfect” and said he “never yelled. He never got upset.”

“He was always full of life, and they took that away from him,” she said. “How can these people look him in the eye and shoot him?”

Lillian Hebdon, who co-owned the business with her husband, said he had been considering a return to school to pursue a medical degree.

“He said, ‘You know, I’m going back to school to be a doctor so I can help people,’ ” Lillian Hebdon said.

She said her husband first became interested in medicine about seven years ago when their son, Dustin, was born with a hole in his heart that required two surgeries.

“He kept saying, ‘Everything will be OK,’ ” Lillian Hebdon said of the seven months that Dustin was in the hospital.

The couple’s second child, Diamond, was born in July. Gregory Hebdon came up with the name, his widow said.

“I miss him so much,” she added, sobbing.