2 Die in Shooting at Torrance Auto Dealership

In an apparent murder-suicide Tuesday, a man entered a Honda dealership in Torrance, opened fire on a woman and then turned the gun on himself, police said. Co-workers said the dead woman was the estranged or former wife of the gunman.

According to witnesses, 31-year-old Joe Kelly, a tow truck driver from Lomita, walked into the sales room of the Scott Robinson Honda dealership shortly before 11 a.m. and shot sales clerk Kim Kelly seven times before killing himself. It was unclear whether the couple were still married or recently divorced.

Police spokesman Sgt. Kevin Kreager confirmed only that a man and a woman were dead inside the dealership in the 20300 block of Hawthorne Boulevard and that the man was the assailant. He would not discuss the relationship between the two and declined to formally identify them, pending notification of relatives.

Kreager said police received several 911 calls from employees and customers about a shooting at the large dealership. “We made a conscious and quick decision to have our SWAT team go in and rescue the woman,” he said. But by the time officers reached the woman, she and the gunman were dead. Kyle Warren, 23, whose sister Ryan Warren, 25, works in sales at Scott Robinson, said he rushed to the dealership when he heard the news of a shooting and was relieved to learn that his sister was unharmed. Warren, an employee at the Harbor City Honda Dealership in Wilmington, said Joe Kelly used to work with him several years ago and that he still occasionally saw Kelly when he dropped off cars at the Harbor City dealership.

Warren described Kelly as generally happy in the past but said Kelly appeared depressed several weeks ago. “I just knew they had problems,” he said, referring to Joe and Kim Kelly, who Warren believed were divorced.

Joe Kelly’s boss at Gardena-based Falcon Towing, manager Jerry Lopez, said he was shocked to learn of the shooting. Lopez described Kelly as “a very, very nice guy.” Lopez said Kelly was always laughing. “He would participate in anything you asked him. This is a real shame,” Lopez said.

When the shooting started, Ryan Warren and several other employees locked themselves in a bathroom upstairs for nearly an hour until police came, Warren’s mother, Elythe, said as she waited outside the dealership for Torrance police to permit her daughter to leave.

Yellow police tape marked off most of the block as police investigated the crime. The rest of the 14 employees present during the shooting huddled next to the building, away from the press.

As most of the television crews pulled away, a tall, well-built man rushed toward several Torrance police officers and begged to be let inside the dealership, identifying himself as the boyfriend of the victim. Police let the man in. Half an hour later, the man left the dealership sobbing, without talking to reporters.