Worker Recalls Shootout at Beauty Salon : Crime: The suspect killed by police in Huntington had been seen casing the area. An officer is in fair condition after surgery.

He had been casing the Huntington Beach shopping plaza for a week, shop workers remembered, carrying a duffel bag and pausing ominously at storefronts.

When he strolled into the Green Tree Salon on Friday afternoon, “I just knew something wasn’t right,” said hairdresser Mitzi Douillard.

Within 15 minutes, the man would be dead, shot by a police officer in a fierce, close-range gunfight as the lawman responded to Douillard’s surreptitious call for help. The officer was wounded in the shootout, which the hairdresser, a customer and the customer’s 2-year-old son heard in horror while locked in a back bathroom.

When the gunfire ended, Douillard emerged to bullet-scarred walls and shattered vanity mirrors.

Orange County sheriff’s detectives continued investigating the incident Saturday. The officer, Nick Ekovich Jr., 52, was recovering from surgery at UCI Medical Center in Orange and was listed in fair condition, hospital and police officials said.

The suspect, identified as Eric Fredricksen, 35, of Santa Ana, was pronounced dead at the scene, Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Steve Fauchier said.

Despite the ordeal, Douillard returned to the salon Saturday, where she and other hairdressers cleaned up the shop and talked about her harrowing tale.

At 3:15 p.m., the suspect paused in front of the salon and stared at Douillard, she said. The hairdresser was inside the store with a customer--who was in the midst of a hair coloring--and her son. Startled, Douillard picked up the telephone and dialed two numbers that might have saved her life: “9” and “1.”

The man strolled into the salon, gave his name as “David” and said he needed to make an appointment, she said. Douillard made the appointment for 5 p.m. Saturday and casually told him that she’d see him then, she said.

“He just wouldn’t leave,” Douillard said. “He just stood there. He was confident, and he wasn’t in a hurry.”

When the man didn’t move, Douillard dialed the final digit: “1”--connecting the call to a dispatcher.

He then ordered her to hang up the phone, but instead she merely covered the phone’s light with her thumb, leaving the line open. On the other end, police dispatchers “could hear voices and noises that indicated that some type of disturbance was occurring at the location,” Police Sgt. Janet Perez said.

Seconds later, Douillard said, he demanded again that she hang up the phone. He nodded toward his bag, and there, poking out through a hole, was a gun, she said.

The man then forced the women and the customer’s son into a back bathroom.

He demanded their jewelry and grabbed their purses, then took the keys out of Douillard’s purse to lock the door, she said.

When the boy began to cry loudly, the man threatened to kill him if the women couldn’t keep him quiet, Douillard said. The women told the boy they were playing a game and had to hide quietly in the bathroom. Still worried that the man might open fire through the bathroom door, the women contemplated standing on the toilet, thinking that his shots might have a harder time finding their mark that way.

She said the man also threatened to rape her and the other woman.

“This wasn’t about money,” said Douillard, 36, of Huntington Beach resident. “It was about control.”

Pretending she was on his side, Douillard said, she tried to get the suspect out of the store.

“I said, ‘You know you’re going to get caught if you stay and do that,’ ” she said. “I said, ‘We need to keep you safe. We’ve got to get out of here. We don’t want to get caught.’ ”

The man shoved Douillard back into the bathroom.

A few seconds later, the store’s owner, Maria Greenbaum, came in.

“I walked into the shop and [I thought] Mitzi wasn’t here,” Greenbaum said. “The guy was already there.”

The man grabbed Greenbaum and forced her into the back of the store. That’s when Ekovich, a patrol officer, arrived. The suspect cursed and dropped the earrings, necklaces, bracelets and sunglasses in his hands, Douillard said.

*

Locked inside the bathroom, they listened as shot after shot rang out, shattering mirrors and the glass door and pounding into the walls. At one point, Douillard said, she bent down to talk to the boy and a bullet sailed through the wall, precisely where her head had been a half-second earlier.

Eventually, the shots ended. But there was a problem: “We heard all these shots,” Douillard said. “But we didn’t know who shot who. So we just stayed in the bathroom.”

Paramedics and officers arrived. The suspect was handcuffed, but he was clearly dead already, Douillard said, lying face-down toward the front of the store.

Police would not comment on their investigation Saturday. It remained unclear how many times the suspect had been shot, or who fired first, officials said.

Ekovich, a 25-year department veteran, was shot “multiple times,” police said. Most of the bullets pounded into a protective vest covering his shoulder and chest, officials said. The surgery was on a wound in his left arm. He is expected to recover, Sgt. Perez said.

Ekovich’s relatives were with him at UCI Medical Center, hospital officials said.

Ekovich is “one of our veterans,” Police Lt. Tony Sollecito said. Like all officers in Huntington Beach, he’s involved in community policing. He spends his own money on Beanie Babies, which he carries in the back of his patrol car to give to children who have been through traumatic events.

“He tries to make it a little better for them,” said Sollecito, who has known Ekovich for 16 years. “He’s just a great guy. He’s a very, very caring officer.”

Ekovich has one biological child and one stepchild, Sollecito said.

Fredricksen’s relatives, reached at a home in Fullerton, declined to comment Saturday.