A gunman said to be looking for a former police sergeant convicted in the Rodney King beating stormed a halfway house and killed a man before being shot to death by a SWAT team.

The gunman, Randall Craig Tolbert, 34, also shot and wounded a man and pistol-whipped a woman in the house Thursday, authorities said. The bullet grazed the man's head. The woman's condition wasn't immediately available.Tolbert killed Karl Milan, 67, of Phoenix, who was at the house about 60 miles east of Los Angeles to help a friend service vending machines, authorities said.

Tolbert apparently intended to kill former Sgt. Stacey Koon, who is finishing a federal sentence for violating King's civil rights in 1991. Koon and three other white officers were videotaped beating King, who is black, after a traffic stop.

Koon spent Thanksgiving with his family and was not at the Re-Entry Community Corrections Center when the gunman burst into the house in the afternoon, Koon's lawyer, Ira Salzman said.

Tolbert, a black man, said over drinks Wednesday night that he wanted to kill Koon, said Phil Chavez, a friend of the gunman.

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"He was drinking . . . and he wanted to do it last night," Chavez said. "He just wanted to kill that guy."

Tolbert's relatives talked him out of taking his gun to the house Wednesday night, Chavez said.

Resident Clinton Cooper was watching from the back of a room when the gunman entered the home.

"He had one of the staff members around the throat and a gun at his waist," Cooper said. "The staff member started talking to him, and he got him out of the room long enough for me to get out of the window and go call 911."

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