Man Dies in Shootout With Deputies in Thousand Oaks

A gunman was fatally shot in a battle with officers Tuesday morning after he opened fire in the parking lot of the Ventura County sheriff’s station in Thousand Oaks.

For reasons unknown to authorities, the man started shooting at the two-story building with two high-caliber handguns a little after 9:30 a.m.

Eric Nishimoto, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, said deputies shot back in a volley that lasted five to 10 minutes.

“We don’t have a motive,” Nishimoto said. “We have no idea why he chose this particular building and why he chose to do what he did.”

The man was identified as 48-year-old Gregg Wynn Hackett of Newbury Park.

When Hackett started blasting, his bullets smashed the windows of a community meeting room where deputies and officers from other law-enforcement agencies were attending a routine training class.

Some officers returned fire through the windows, while others “deployed out of the other end of the building to outflank the suspect,” said Undersheriff Craig Husband.

During “a lengthy gun battle,” deputies toting AR-15 carbine rifles scuttled from car to car in the parking lot to one side of Hackett, who was crouched behind his late-model red Acura, Husband said.

“It takes a lot of courage to put yourself in harm’s way and confront a gunman who is shooting as fast as he can,” Husband said. “There were a lot of courageous acts out there today.”

Dozens of officers from the Sheriff’s Department, the Simi Valley Police Department and the California Highway Patrol converged on the scene. A sheriff’s helicopter hovered overhead as officers positioned themselves on nearby hillsides.

Shots pocked the building’s facade in several places, shattering a plate-glass window in the lobby in addition to those in the meeting room. Several employees had minor cuts from flying glass, Nishimoto said.

About 100 people were working inside at the time.

After the shootout, police draped a tarp over Hackett’s body. Several bullets had pierced his car, which sat with its hatchback open about 50 yards from the station’s entrance.

The shooting jolted workers in nearby offices as well as in the Sheriff’s Department.

On a hill about 200 yards away, two workers returning to the headquarters of the Calleguas Municipal Water District saw the gunman in the parking lot below, said Eric Bergh, the district’s resources manager.

When the gunman turned toward them, the workers ducked and ran into the headquarters.

“We figured we were being shot at,” said Don Kendall, the agency’s general manager. “We’d always felt real safe next to a sheriff’s station, but I guess this is the kind of thing that can happen any time, any place.”

After the incident, the sheriff’s station was surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape. SWAT team members peered down from the roof and officers in full combat gear combed the surrounding hills. Initially, police thought there may have been two gunmen involved, but later backed away from that theory.

Officials expected to be working at the scene into the night, gathering bullet casings and taking statements from witnesses to reconstruct the shootout.

Deputies in Thousand Oaks were scheduled to participate Tuesday in National Night Out -- a crime-fighting promotion by law-enforcement agencies. Thousand Oaks and neighboring Simi Valley are routinely ranked as among the safest cities in the country.

Meanwhile, little was known about Hackett. His father, Harold Hackett of Thousand Oaks, declined comment, saying only that his son seemed fine when the two saw each other recently. Detectives from the Sheriff’s Department interviewed the elder Hackett on Tuesday afternoon.

Since the mid-1980s, Gregg Hackett lived for years at a time in the Eugene, Ore., area. Between stints up north, he would return to Southern California.

If Hackett intended to die in his attack, he joined the ranks of those who commit what is known as “suicide by cop.”

In Los Angeles County, researchers found that 11% of the people shot by officers from 1987 to 1997 had deliberately provoked fire from police.

“It’s not yet clear why someone would choose this form of suicide over another,” said Dr. Deidre Anglin, a USC professor of emergency medicine who was one of the study’s authors.

Even so, she said, the study helped the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department develop guidelines for officers facing troubled people who want to be killed. Dispatchers are now trained to ask callers for information that may tip deputies to such a problem before they arrive on the scene, Anglin said.

Many of the study’s subjects had arrest records, a psychiatric history, and problems with alcohol. In most cases, there also was a recent “triggering event,” such as the breakup of a relationship or the loss of a job.

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Times staff writers Gregory Griggs, Fred Alvarez, Andrew Blankstein and library researcher Robin Mayper contributed to this report.