Man Found Dead in Burned Home After Standoff

A delusional gunman who held off police for more than 12 hours at his Echo Park home, firing more than 50 rounds and withstanding dozens of tear gas canisters, was found dead Thursday after fire engulfed the house.

The body of the 40-year-old man was discovered in the smoldering ruins of the house in the 1600 block of Lucretia Avenue shortly after 7 p.m., authorities said.

“I’m not sure if it was our flash-bangs or the suspect who started the fire,” said Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Kyle Jackson.

The name of the man had not been released, pending notification of relatives, and the cause of death was not known.

The house ignited about 5 p.m., after authorities had evacuated about 100 neighbors, who were able to return after 8:30 p.m. At one point, a Fire Department helicopter dropped about 450 gallons of water on the blaze as it spread to palm trees.

Throughout the day, police tried to coax the man from the house. Neighbors a block away said they heard him screaming, “I need help! The FBI and CIA are after me!”

“A friend of his told us that he had been experiencing emotional and psychological difficulties,” Jackson said. In any case, the man “was in a situation where he could have held officers at bay for hours, if not days.”

At the end of the day, police tried to calm neighbors who gathered on street corners and criticized the police tactics as heavy-handed.

“You burned his house down with grenades, and there was no reason for it!” William Jay of Concerned Citizens of Echo Park shouted. “We don’t need that kind of Rampart stuff around here.”

But Jackson said: “My concern is the safety of the people in this community. If some people have another opinion, that’s their right.”

The incident began about 6:30 a.m., when the man called 911 to report an attempted burglary. A neighbor said that an hour earlier, he had heard the man fire a shot.

When police arrived, the man, who owned at least eight registered guns, fired a few rounds, then refused to come outside because “he didn’t believe we were really the police,” Sgt. John Pasquariello said.

“We brought out our SWAT team, crisis negotiators, department psychologist, [the man’s] girlfriend, even his lawyer,” Pasquariello said. “His lawyer shouted out to the suspect, but he didn’t believe it was his lawyer.”

Ultimately, the man fired dozens of rounds, one of which narrowly missed a SWAT officer.

Police launched more than 100 tear gas canisters into the house, Pasquariello said. Occasionally, “he’d come out on the porch with guns in both hands, catch his breath and then go back inside the house,” the sergeant said.

Police said that, as a last resort, they fired flash-bang grenades, which are used to distract a suspect, and that the house fire broke out after that. Initially, firefighters were reluctant to combat the flames because of continuing gunfire coming from inside the home and fear that the man might have been holed up in a basement.

Some witnesses, however, suggested that the sounds of gunfire might have been caused by ammunition going off in the flames.

Neighbors described the man, who had lived in the home at least seven years, as contentious. An 8-foot wrought-iron fence borders the frontyard, which is guarded by a Rottweiler and an Alaskan husky.

Steve Seemayer, 46, recalled feeding the Rottweiler a dog bone only Tuesday morning. Then, he said, “I waved and said, ‘Hello there.’ [The man] said hello back and didn’t seem upset at all.”

But one night last August, the man charged onto his porch about 11 p.m. to yell at next-door neighbors in a hot tub, Seemayer said.

“He screamed that he had a lung problem and the steam was bothering him,” Seemayer said. “They called police, who came out, talked to him for a few minutes and left.”

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Times staff writers Elise Gee and Massie E. Ritsch contributed to this story.