CHARGES AGAINST SHOOTER REDUCED.

Byline: Amy Raisin Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - Charges against a 73-year-old Canyon Country man who sparked a three-hour police standoff Saturday when he fired a gun in his residence have been reduced, authorities said.

Joseph Kowalski, initially arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, faces a lesser count of felony negligent discharge of a firearm after investigators discovered he had fired a shot into the floor, not at a neighbor, said Detective Victor Lewandowski of the Santa Clarita sheriff's station.

Initial reports from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department stated Kowalski had a disagreement with a female roommate and locked her out of his Hidaway Avenue apartment.

At the woman's request, a neighbor used a ladder to enter through a second-story window, authorities said. According to the neighbor, Kowalski confronted him and fired one shot.

It took Santa Clarita sheriff's deputies and the department's special tactics team more than three hours to coax Kowalski onto a balcony, where the grandfather was arrested.

A frail-looking Kowalski appeared at his arraignment Tuesday in Newhall Superior Court in a wheelchair and brown jail-issue jumpsuit. That hearing was continued until June 25, based in part on the concerns of Kowalski's adult son and daughter, who said they feared for their father's fragile health.

``This isn't right, how my dad's been portrayed in all of this,'' said Joe Kowalski, 44. ``My dad was being taken advantage of and told (the woman) she couldn't stay there any more. Next thing he knows, there's an intruder in his apartment, some guy he doesn't know.''

The younger Kowalski, who described his father as outgoing and generous to people in need, said his father had allowed the 51-year-old woman to stay at his apartment while she dealt with some financial problems.

``He's always been like that - he just helps people out,'' Joe Kowalski said. ``But how can they fault him for firing a shot into his own floor when he found an intruder in his home? This doesn't make any sense to us.''

Kowalski said his father has suffered multiple heart attacks and strokes in recent years and takes numerous medications.

At the arraignment, the judge initially decided to release Kowalski to his children's care on the condition that he stay with one of them and wear an electronic monitoring device. He would be permitted to leave the house for medical appointments only, the judge said.

After talking to Kowalski's son and daughter, however, the judge negated his original decision and ordered the man held in the hospital ward of the Los Angeles County jail until his arraignment in two weeks.

David R. Lopez, a deputy district attorney in charge of the Newhall office, said it is too early to say whether prosecutors would seek jail time for Kowalski.

``He's not the usual defendant who commits that sort of crime,'' Lopez said Wednesday. ``But he's doing jail time right now, which is ... standard when you shoot off a gun in the county of Los Angeles.''

Amy Raisin, [phone]

amy.raisin(at)dailynews.com