19-Hour Standoff Ends in Slaying of Gunman

A gunman previously charged with weapons violations was killed early Wednesday and three sheriff’s deputies were wounded, ending a 19-hour standoff at a Pico Rivera industrial complex punctuated by tear gas volleys and automatic gunfire.

Deputies used tear gas and other tactics in efforts to dislodge auto mechanic Daniel Lawrence Collins, 39, from his repair garage and residence on Paramount Boulevard near Slauson Avenue. Collins answered at least three times with about 20 rounds each from an illegally converted, fully automatic AK-47 assault rifle, authorities said.

Collins had been holed up in the building with a cache of guns and ammunition since 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, disgruntled over a recent eviction notice served at the shop, which had doubled as his home for 19 years.

On Tuesday evening, Collins’ mother pleaded with her son over a loudspeaker to come out of the red brick building. Deputies played tape recordings of other family members begging him to lay down his arms. A bomb squad robot was also sent in to determine his exact location, and tear gas was launched three times.

But Collins remained barricaded until 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, when he was killed in a gun battle with a SWAT team.

None of the deputies’ wounds was life-threatening. During the final shootout, Phillip Martinez, 40, suffered a bullet wound to his hand, and Julio Raya, 41, was shot in the upper arm. Both were in good condition in area hospitals.

Sgt. Phillip Yaw, 50, was struck in the left wrist by a bullet fragment during an earlier exchange and waited until the siege was over to report the minor wound. He was later treated at an area hospital and released.

“The scariest thing about it is [deputies] did everything they could to get him out without injury,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert Stoneman. “But in the end, they still had to go in and get him.”

Authorities said bullets from the rifle pierced cinder-block walls of buildings across the street.

They were unsure how Collins withstood the tear gas attacks. “We cannot speculate about that now,” said Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Hellmold. He said the gunman had a “long history” of weapons and drug charges.

Friends said Collins’ mother rented a portion of the complex for both her business, a cleaning supply warehouse, and her son’s business, Wild to Mild Racing Engineers.

But financial troubles forced her to give up the operations. Owners served eviction notices to Collins’ mother last week. She vacated, but her son refused to leave. The owners asked authorities to remove Collins on Tuesday, but when deputies tried to, he answered the door with the assault rifle and a handgun in his waistband.

The deputies retreated, called a sheriff’s special weapons team, and the standoff began, authorities said.

Collins fired his first shots at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday after deputies used exploding diversionary devices to try to scare him out. He fired again 12 hours later, wounding Martinez and Raya, when weapons team members tried to storm the building, authorities said, adding that a few minutes later, Collins suffered his fatal wound as he fired on other team members who had entered the building. The suspect died in an ambulance at 5:30 a.m.

Seven nearby businesses, with a total of about 100 employees, were evacuated. A large area around the garage was closed to traffic.

Ann Fraleigh, 43, whose apartment is a block away from the shooting site, said she could hear the gunfire and see the police activity from her terrace before she was evacuated.

Her 11-year-old son was terrified by the incident because he had witnessed a shooting two years earlier, she said, when they lived in another part of Pico Rivera.

“This guy who lived in the complex went crazy and started shooting up the place,” said Fraleigh of the previous incident. “No one was hurt, but that’s why we moved to our new place, to forget about that.”

Friends called Collins a hard-working man who had previously not shown aggressive behavior.

Woody Rodelo, 48, rented an auto garage next door in the complex for nearly two decades. The mechanics would often share tools or talk about the Corvettes that Collins specialized in repairing.

Rodelo said that even when Collins got the eviction notice he seemed to take it in stride and began to look for nearby facilities to rent. Mike Rosales, 19, said Collins used to frequent the service station where Rosales works as a cashier. After Collins bought his usual doughnuts and milk, they would sometimes talk for nearly an hour about cars.

“The guy cared about his work a lot. I think he lost it because he couldn’t take losing his garage.”