Police Kill Hostage-Taker

A devoted but troubled father, who had waged a vocal and increasingly hostile campaign against school authorities over the education of his deaf teenage son, was shot dead by a police sniper Monday after he planted a pipe bomb outside the Orange County Board of Education and held two administrators hostage at gunpoint.

Michael P. Generakos, a 45-year-old Lakewood chemist, had recently lost custody of his children and was locked in relentless battle with his estranged wife and a school district he believed was ignoring his wishes over how his 16-year-old son should be taught.

When he walked into the Board of Education offices in Costa Mesa on Monday afternoon, he was a familiar presence to those who had faced his public harangues and menacing voicemail messages. But this time he had a gun.

Just after nightfall, after occupying a building with 150 people inside for three hours, he walked out of the district offices with a gun pointed at the back of an associate superintendent, whose hands were raised high.

SWAT team members, stationed on rooftops and sprawled on the grounds surrounding the offices, ordered Generakos to drop his weapon. When he moved forward, a police marksman fired a single shot that struck Generakos in the head.

He collapsed and lay in a widening pool of blood. The hostage, Deputy Supt. John Nelson, ran about 50 yards to the waiting arms of authorities.

Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Tom Boyland said the bomb squad detonated two devices. The first, found in a flower bed outside the building, appeared to be a pipe bomb, he said. The second, found upstairs, did not appear to be real.

Boyland said the only demand the gunman made during the standoff was that he wanted to talk to the press.

School officials anguished over how this might have ended differently.

Generakos last communicated with district officials just weeks ago in an ominous precursor to Monday’s tragedy.

“I haven’t gone away and you haven’t seen the end of me,” Generakos said on a voicemail message left for district official Larry Belkin, director of special education services for the department.

Sheila Meyers, a Board of Education member, said: “It just makes me sick that this happened. The boy apparently is in a lot of physical pain and now he’s lost his father.”

Dispute Over Son’s Treatment

The tragedy began months before Monday’s fatal conclusion.

It was the discovery that Generakos’ son may be going blind that launched the dispute between his parents over educational services, officials said. His mother, Winifred Kordich, Generakos’ estranged wife, wanted him to learn Braille, said Eric H. Woolery, a member of the Board of Education. But Generakos fought the idea, claiming a new medical treatment would reverse his son’s deteriorating eyesight.

Woolery said county educators were forced to comply with the mother’s wishes under the court order, which also resulted in a special education plan that she devised with school officials. The board’s decision to honor the mother’s request prompted Generakos to make appearances at every county board meeting for at least six months, where he would use his allotted three minutes for public comment to lash out at school officials and staff about his son’s care.

“He was gaveled down several times at meetings when he tried to disparage staff without any basis,” Woolery said.

At times, Generakos became so angry that police were called to the meetings in anticipation of his outbursts, officials said. Security guards were stationed at district headquarters and at the son’s University High School campus in Irvine, Woolery said.

School officials did not seek a restraining order against him because they hoped to mediate the issue, Woolery said.

But Generakos hadn’t been to a board meeting for the last two months, choosing instead to rail against county educators over the telephone, Belkin said. He left threatening messages on a dozen different voicemails, accusing officials of lying and warning them that he had a gun.

“It was more of a domestic issue than an educational issue,” Belkin said. “He’d lost complete custody of his kids and he was upset about that. He seemed distraught. His whole life was his kids.”

Said Woolery: “It’s a very big tragedy. He seemed to think there is a conspiracy against him. Somehow he felt the world was against him on this. He really felt another course of action was needed for his son.”

The angry phone calls came after a recent court decision that gave full custody of his children to their mother, who also has full educational custody that enables her to make all decisions about the children’s education.

“He would say things like: ‘I have a gun . . . you guys need to watch out,’ ” Belkin said, adding that officials had hired an attorney to help them deal with the irate telephone calls.

The county’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing program operates out of three Irvine campuses but is available to any sixth- through 12th-grade student in the county. The program is noted for its mainstreaming approach, which allows hearing-impaired children to learn with peers in regular classrooms. Along with its academic offerings, the program also offers students athletics and vocational training services.

The son began attending school in Irvine after his parents, who live in Lakewood, won a mediation with Long Beach Unified School District, Belkin said. They argued successfully that the program in Irvine Unified was more appropriate for their son, he said.

A Devoted Father, Difficult Times

Dave Sherwood, Generakos’ next-door neighbor in Lakewood, a Los Angeles County community of modest 1950s-era stucco houses, said Generakos had a background in biochemistry and had taught in the past at Long Beach City College. He was a single father who had had custody of his two children for most of their lives. Sherwood said Generakos had held a variety of jobs in the biochemistry field, because it was difficult for him to find work that allowed him to care for his children.

Belkin said Generakos had worked recently as a chemist with Coast Community College District.

He was such a devoted dad that even when his daughter slept over with Sherwood’s daughter, he would come over to tuck her in to bed.

But this fall, he said, the children’s mother won custody of their 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter and denied their father access to them.

“I think he knew he was probably not going to have his kids in his life like he’d had and known them all along,” Sherwood said.

Supt. John F. Dean, whom Generakos had apparently intended to see Monday but who had left the building just minutes earlier, said the Board of Education was caught in the middle of an “impossibly volatile domestic dispute.”

“The department of education believes [the son] is going to have more problems than being profoundly deaf,” he said. “The mother, who has custody of the boy, wants the extra services but the father does not. What do you do?”

In the older Lakewood neighborhood where Generakos’ parents live, neighbors closed ranks to protect the couple from media inquiries. On the narrow tree-lined streets those who knew Generakos, many for decades, were ashen-faced and shocked.

Those who talked to his parents, Peter and Mary Generakos, said they became hysterical when they heard about their son’s death.

Earlier in the day, before the shooting, Peter Generakos said he and his wife had not talked to their son, who lived only blocks away, in six weeks. He would not say why.

At the nearby home where Kordich was with her children, the shades were drawn, the lights low. The house seemed empty except for low voices speaking inside. A friend of the family who answered the door said no one inside wanted to talk.

Flashed Handgun, Marched to 2nd Floor

The showdown at the Orange County Board of Education began at 2 p.m. Generakos entered the administration building, flashing a handgun and clutching a sinister-looking cardboard box draped with wires, witnesses said. He walked directly to Dean’s second-floor office and marched inside, where Deputy Supt. Lynn Hartline and Associate Supt. John Nelson were meeting.

For nearly three hours, Generakos held them hostage, hidden from police by the smoked-glass office windows.

Shortly after 5 p.m. and an hour after releasing Hartline for unknown reasons, Generakos and Nelson suddenly emerged from behind a circle of bushes that surround the flagpole in front of the building. They walked slowly, with Generakos using the disheveled school official as a shield.

Generakos moved slightly to the right for a split second, making himself a target for the two-man police sniper team positioned across the street, about 100 yards away. One officer lay on the grass, behind a rifle set on a bipod.

The movement was all they needed in the fading daylight.

A single shot echoed loudly through the business complex. Generakos dropped to the asphalt and Nelson, his arms still in the air, began running toward Red Hill Avenue.

Costa Mesa Police officers cautiously approached the downed gunman, with weapons drawn. When police determined that the man was dead, deputies from the Orange County sheriff’s bomb unit checked him for explosives before allowing other investigators to examine the body.

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Times staff writers Megan Garvey, Lisa Richardson, Jack Leonard, Ray F. Herndon, Nancy Wride, Liz Seymour, H.G. Reza, Jean O. Pasco, Tina Nguyen and librarian Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Standoff In Costa Mesa

Michael P. Generakos, who held Orange County Board of Education Administrators John Nelson and Lynn Harline hostage Monday, was shot and killed by a police sharpshooter.

1. 2:05 p.m. - Generakos storms into office, holds Nelson and Hartline hostage.

2. 3:30 p.m. - Hartline leaves building unharmed.

3. After 5 p.m. - Generakos emerges from building holding gun to Nelson’s back.

4. 5:10 p.m.: SWAT marksman shoots Generakos as he steps from behind hostage.

Source: Costa Mesa Police Department

Reported by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times