Gunman Held After 4-Hour Standoff

NORTH HOLLYWOOD — A quarrel outside a Vineland Avenue apartment complex Saturday escalated into a four-hour standoff between a gun-wielding suspect and police SWAT team members, authorities and neighbors said.

The gunman, Fernando Tamayo-Garcia, 32, a building resident who eventually gave himself up, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder of a police officer for allegedly firing shots at the first officers to arrive at the apartment building.

Officers did not return fire, and no one was injured in the shooting.

Tamayo-Garcia was also arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly pointing a gun at the head of a female resident.

Three other men were questioned by police and released.

The trouble began about 7:30 a.m. when the gunman began arguing with his companions in a parking lot at the complex in the 6500 block of Vineland Avenue, witnesses said.

“One of the guys had a gun and he was shooting into the ground,” said Tony Melgar, who lives in a first-floor apartment. “The other guys were trying to calm him down.”

A short time later, Melgar said, police arrived, and he heard them tell the gunman to raise his hands above his head. “I heard a shot. . . . Then the police came and told us to get out of the building.”

At one point during the confrontation, Tamayo-Garcia crashed through a window in a first-floor apartment and pointed a gun at the head of a woman resident, said building manager Letty Corral.

“She told me that he let her go when she started screaming,” Corral said. “She picked up her little girl and ran to her brother’s apartment across the hall.” The woman and child sat in a police van as the standoff unfolded.

About 80 residents of the working-class neighborhood were evacuated from the apartment complex and the single-family homes along Hamlin Street and Cleon Avenue, said Lt. Anthony P. Alba, an LAPD spokesman. Police also cordoned off a section of Vineland between Victory Boulevard and Vanowen Street.

Once the buildings were cleared of residents, SWAT team members fired tear gas into an apartment they believed to be occupied by the gunman, Alba said.

Two young men and one elderly man emerged from the building a short time later. They were handcuffed, taken away in police cruisers and later released.

A Spanish-speaking officer eventually persuaded Tamayo-Garcia to lay down his 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun and turn himself in, Alba said.

Shortly before noon, the gunman came out of the building and was handcuffed. As he got into the back of the cruiser, he smirked at a knot of neighbors and media representatives standing a few yards away.

“I don’t know why he’s smiling,” Alba said. “There’s nothing funny about what he did here today.”

In anticipation of a long siege, a police supply truck had hauled ice, water, conference tables, folding chairs and portable toilets into the area. Paramedics and an ambulance were parked across from the apartment building as police officers watched the building and waited.