Barricaded Man Keeps 700 Trapped

ORANGE — Sebastian Zamora burst from a 14th-floor stairwell of the Orange Tower office building at 10:10 a.m. Monday and blurted, “Dude, there’s a maniac on the roof! He just pulled a gun on me!”

After warning the two construction workers he encountered, Zamora fled to call police while the gunman, later identified as Robert Carlos Herrera, 22, of Placentia, rambled on a walkie-talkie he had stolen from Zamora.

Herrera weaved crazily along the edge of the roof, occasionally brandishing and twirling what appeared to be a long silver pistol.

SWAT teams that moved in to confront the distraught gunman closed off the normally busy, 10-lane State College and sealed off roads along a perimeter around the building.

For five hours and 40 minutes, about 700 people--including Rodney King--were trapped inside the green and gray, glass office tower at the corner of North State College Boulevard and Orangewood Avenue, and in nearby restaurants and parking garages.

Zamora, a building engineer for Equity Owned Properties, the building owner, said Herrera lured him to the roof by telling him he was a building inspector.

For hours, elderly people with doctors’ appointments at the Doheny Eye Institute, attorneys and their clients, insurance adjusters, real estate agents and others were stuck in their offices, allowed out only for an occasional trip to the bathroom under armed guard. Employees of Osram Sylvania on the top floor were evacuated.

“I can’t believe this loony tune is holding up hundreds of people’s lives,” said Rick Delia, a waiter at the National Sports Grille next door, where two dozen people glumly sat for hours.

“We were held hostage,” said Bob Wosczyk, a salesman for the Executone phone company. “It sounded like we were working in Vietnam all day with the helicopters going around.”

King and his attorney were at a meeting at Judicial Arbitration Mediation Services on the sixth floor.

“The buzzers went off, and they just told us to stay in our seats and lock the doors,” King said later. “It was scary.”

From the roof, Herrera threw several items over the edge, including his car keys, jacket and the walkie-talkie, after the battery died. He also pretended he was about to dive, then laughed.

“Seven hundred dollars for that walkie-talkie, gone!” said Zamora.

Police said Herrera was despondent because he was worried that he was about to be fired from his job and lose his girlfriend.

Finally, about 3:30 p.m., as police prepared to toss a phone to him, he pried open the roof door and peered into the stairwell, according to Orange police communications supervisor Gilbert Carreon.

Carreon said one of the police SWAT team members shouted, “Hey man, you want to come down and talk to us?” Herrera agreed, and the tense barricade was over. His weapon, it turned out, was a silver BB gun. Herrera was arrested and booked on suspicion of robbery in connection with Zamora’s walkie-talkie.

Traffic was stalled outside the barricade perimeter, with Anaheim Boulevard choked with fuming cars and drivers. James West, 49, of Kentucky was stuck trying to return to his room at the nearby Hilton Suites-Anaheim.

“Hey, this is California, huh?” West said. “This helps us, we’re recruiting people to move from California. Let’s put it this way, I always emphasis how low our crime rate is.”