Intended Victim Narrowly Escapes Gunman : Shooting: Company personnel manager didn’t realize he was being stalked. At one point he almost ran into the accused killer.

It wasn’t until later that company personnel manager Tom Erickson realized that the gunman was stalking him.

“He was looking for me,” said Erickson, Elgar Corp.’s vice president of human resources. “He went to one of my colleagues and asked for me. . . . (The colleague) tried to talk him out of it. He swung the gun around. Actually, I was very near--he didn’t see me.”

Larry T. Hansel allegedly stormed through the Elgar Corp. building Tuesday afternoon seeking Erickson, who laid Hansel off from his job in March, and two other company executives. During the shooting rampage that left two dead Tuesday, Hansel was only several feet from Erickson.

When he first heard explosions and smelled smoke, Erickson thought that equipment at Elgar had blown up. Seeking cover, he scrambled beneath a desk. When the smoke subsided, Erickson climbed out from his hiding place. He tried to phone for help but the telephone lines were dead--the gunman had shot out the switchboard.

Moments later, after talking to hysterical employees, Erickson said, he realized there was a gunman in the building.

Attempting to comfort a crying employee, Erickson escorted her down the stairs from the second-floor executive offices and toward the back door, he said.

As the two approached the door, thinking they were heading for safety, Erickson suddenly realized they were walking right up on Hansel. And he saw that he was armed.

“We were right behind him, he didn’t turn around,” Erickson said. “As soon as I saw who it was, I went another way. . . .

“I saw it was Larry Hansel, and I knew there was a potential problem. I knew if he was to be after somebody, it would be me and his supervisor.”

When Erickson finally emerged from the building, Hansel had fled. Employees told him that there were bodies inside, and Erickson returned to the building, finding other employees gathered around two bodies on the second floor.

In March, Erickson was the company executive who told Hansel that he was among several employees who were laid off. The decision to let Hansel go had more to do with the company’s efforts to streamline--not Hansel’s work performance, Erickson said.

“He was a good technician,” Erickson said.

Hansel appeared to take the news that he had lost his job in stride and did not issue any threats at the meeting, Erickson said. “He was very cordial--he understood. It was nobody’s fault,” Erickson said. “He was calm and collected.”

In fact, Hansel had seemed to enjoy talking to Erickson during his three years with the company, Erickson said. He frequently sought him out to chat, and it was always friendly, he recalled.

But sometimes, there were problems. Hansel liked to proselytize, and Erickson had chided him about it.

“He was a little weird, but we thought he was not dangerous. He was super-religious, cordial and friendly,” said Erickson, who has worked at Elgar eight years.

Yet Erickson warned Hansel more than once that he should confine his conversations to work while he was at the company.

“He was a very religious guy. . . . He lectured so many times. He’d quote the Bible and socialist-type stuff,” Erickson recalled.

Several months ago, Erickson heard that Hansel had begun to talk about the disgruntled postal worker who killed his wife, then drove to an Escondido postal substation and killed two co-workers. Erickson was alarmed by such talk, and he was afraid that Hansel was scaring others, he said.

“I heard that he said to people, ‘You see what happens to people under stress,’ ” Erickson said. “I talked to him about that.”

Again, Erickson asked Hansel to restrict his conversation to matters that were relevant to work.

“We’d warn him and say this is the workplace, ‘Don’t talk like that here,’ ” Erickson recalled. “He horsed around a little bit. He had a couple of warnings. We warned him for poor work habits.”

Though visibly shaken Tuesday, Erickson had mustered his strength and arranged for taxicabs to take Elgar employees home. Before Hansel turned himself in Tuesday, San Diego police were guarding Erickson’s Mission Hills home, sources said.

Erickson beamed as soon as he learned that Hansel had been apprehended.

“Come with me,” he told a reporter, “I’ve got to go tell the others.”

Crossing police ropes, Erickson approached the quiet group of employees, huddled together in a parking lot.

“They got him, they got him,” Erickson said. “Go on home. They got him.”

Smiling broadly, he ushered employees into taxis.

“It just makes you realize how vulnerable we all are,” said Erickson, shaking his head. “Me, lucky? You might say that.”