Police Kill Hospital Gunman : Crime: He apparently was trying to escape area when he fired at and missed an officer. A motorist whose car he jumped in is wounded in the shootout.

FOUNTAIN VALLEY — A man who waved a gun in a hospital parking lot and then opened fire on an officer was shot and killed by police at a busy intersection Friday afternoon.

Police said that at about 1 p.m., employees at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center reported a man standing outside waving, pointing a gun and threatening people in the lobby of an office building in the 11100 block of Warner Avenue.

The man, later identified as 20-year-old Anthony Rios of Santa Ana, then ran across the street, police said. As cars were stopped at a red light at Warner and Euclid Street, Rios got into a Nissan Sentra stopped in the right lane. Police Friday night still did not know if the gunman knew the driver or just picked the car at random.

At that moment, two Fountain Valley officers and a third from Santa Ana blocked the Nissan at the intersection and ordered Rios to drop the gun, Lt. Bob Moseley of Fountain Valley said.

Instead, he got out of the car, “went to the rear of the vehicle and got into a shooting position and shot at an officer several times,” Moseley said. “He fired at least three rounds before the officers returned fire.”

Rios was killed and the Nissan driver was hit by several police bullets, police said. The driver was in stable condition Friday night after major chest surgery. None of the officers was hit.

Witnesses at a gas station across the street said it happened quickly.

“The red Nissan came up and stopped at the red light. There were no lights, no sirens,” said Roch Courreges, the station manager. “The guy took three shots at (the officer) and the cop returned fire. It just happened boom, boom, boom. (The gunman) got hit right in the chest. I was just hoping the guy wouldn’t come over here. . . . The officer was lucky the guy was a bad shot. He was just standing there.”

Ken Woods, a station attendant, gave a similar account.

“The cops told him to throw down his weapon,” Woods said. “The passenger jumped out and tried to shoot at the cop. There were all these bullets flying around. The cop was standing on the grass facing the passenger. He crouched and started shooting at the cop. It was crazy.”

Louise Wilson was driving home with her 5-year-old son only a few lanes from the shooting.

“It was so frightening for us. We couldn’t defend ourselves,” she said. “All we could do was hide underneath our dashboard. I was scared one of the shots was going to get us. . . .” Wilson said that, despite the officers’ orders, the driver of the Nissan “would not get down. He kept sitting up. Afterward, the policeman was yelling for the driver to get out so he crawled out and he had blood on his shirt.”

“I was afraid the policeman was going to get killed because he had no cover whatsoever,” Wilson said.

Officials did not identify the officer who was shot at, saying only that he is a veteran on the force and an outstanding officer.

“The good Lord was protecting him,” Moseley said. “It’s absolutely a miracle the officer was not hit.”

Rios had been acting strangely for the past few days and might have been suffering delusions, relatives told police.

“That is the picture that is beginning to emerge,” Fountain Valley Police Capt. Bill De Nisi said.

Police said they believe that Rios went to visit a relative who works in the office building, which is on the medical center campus.

Helicopters hovered over the scene, where red and yellow police tape marked off surrounding blocks, dozens of witnesses gave statements and teams from two police departments and the district attorney’s office gathered. As in all cases of officer-involved shootings, the Orange County district attorney will handle the investigation.

This is the second fatal, officer-involved shooting in Fountain Valley this year. In the earlier case, the district attorney’s office filed no charges against the officer.