Apartment Building Owner Kills Intruder : Shooting: Laimonis Dzidrums waited six hours before reporting incident to police. Friends of dead man said he was trying to help people who had been evicted the day before.

By GREG HERNANDEZ

Sept. 4, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA — An apartment building owner told police that he shot and killed an intruder in self-defense early Thursday morning, but police remain baffled about why he waited more than six hours to call police.

Laimonis Dzidrums, 62, walked into the city’s police station at 9:15 a.m. and told officers that he had shot an intruder at an apartment building he owns and manages at 1124 W. Highland St., Police Lt. Robert Helton said. The shooting occurred at 2:30 a.m.

Police said Dzidrums had evicted a family from their apartment on Wednesday and was sleeping overnight in that apartment. Dzidrums does not live in the four-unit apartment complex.

“He said he was awakened by an intruder and he fired one shot from a handgun in his possession, striking the man in the head,” Helton said.

Helton said officers arrived at the apartment at 9:30 a.m. and found the man dead in the living room with a large butcher knife at his side.

“Based on our findings, it appears to be self-defense,” Helton said. “We are still trying to determine why there was a delay in contacting us. At this point, the investigation is ongoing.”

The victim was a 25-year-old from Santa Ana, police said. His name was withheld pending notification of relatives.

Dzidrums, who could not be reached for comment, was questioned for several hours by investigators Thursday but was not arrested, Helton said.

Friends of the man who was killed said he lived upstairs from where the shooting occurred. They said he was a good friend of the family who had been evicted and had climbed through a window into the locked apartment to try to find paperwork that they said would help them fight the eviction.

“He was trying to help us,” said Ruben Ramirez, 32, one of the evicted tenants. “We had notification from the U.S. marshal’s office that said we had until Sept. 15 to move out. The paper was somewhere in the apartment and he was trying to find the paper. He didn’t know anyone was in there.”

Ramirez said he and nine other family members had lived in the three-bedroom apartment for six months. They had failed to pay their rent and were evicted by Dzidrums on Wednesday. Ramirez said the landlord changed the locks on the apartment and was staying overnight in the apartment to keep them out.

Rosario Escalante, 42, said she and the man who was killed had lived in another apartment in the complex for more than a year. She said that she knew that he was going to try to enter the apartment but that he “didn’t know that anyone was in there. And, (Dzidrums) probably didn’t know who it was because it was dark.”

An angry Escalante said she wants to see the shooting fully investigated.

“I want to see justice done,” Rodriguez said through tears. “You can run over a dog and at least you stop and get help. (He) was a person. Maybe if (Dzidrums) had called for help right away, he would have had a chance to live.”