Tim Willert
Jorge Beeton was just getting warmed up when Pen Oun scooped up her
young son and fled her second-story apartment and the flurry of
bullets that would soon follow.
Oun, 41, was in the shower washing her hair when gunfire rang out
about 11 a.m. on May 29, 2003. In her living room, 22-month-old
Derick watched TV and played with toys.
"I thought maybe someone was doing some repair work," Oun said
this week. "I never thought someone was shooting."
Curious, Oun wrapped a towel around herself and peeked through the
blinds, but saw nothing. She finished her shower and got dressed. The
sound of more gunfire prompted Oun to open her door. In the courtyard
below, she saw two men taking cover behind a parked car.
"I thought they were fixing the car," she said. "They turned out
to be cops, and they told me to get out."
Oun, who was eight months pregnant, grabbed her wallet, cellphone
and Derick, and then headed for safety.
Good thing.
She returned the next morning to find the walls of her apartment
peppered with more than 70 bullet holes, including 40 in the common
wall separating her apartment from Beeton's.
Most of Oun's neighbors were trapped inside their apartments for
more than three hours before police evacuated them.
"I feel lucky because I got out so soon," she said. "I don't know
what got into his mind, to take a gun out and start shooting."
FOUR HOURS OF FEAR
Today marks the one-year anniversary of what authorities call the
biggest gun battle in Glendale's history.
"It's still talked about quite a bit," said Glendale Police Sgt.
Tom Lorenz, a Special Response Team supervisor who was part of the
effort to subdue Beeton that day at the Griffith Park Apartments in
the 400 block of Paula Avenue.
Beeton, an unemployed security guard armed with an assault rifle
and six other weapons, fired more than 650 rounds through the window
and walls of his apartment. Glendale Police countered with 75 rounds,
including cover fire to free two female residents and two officers
trapped behind cars parked in Beeton's line of fire.
The standoff lasted more than four hours and was punctuated by
several brief exchanges of gunfire between police and the gunman.
Officers eventually fired canisters of a chemical agent that works
like tear gas into Beeton's apartment before making their way inside.
They found him on the floor, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound
to the head.
The shootings closed part of the Golden State (5) Freeway -- which
