Police cars surround the apartment complex on South Meadowbrook Drive at Paradise Valley Road following the shooting. (John Gibbins)

A San Diego police officer was mortally wounded in a barrage of gunfire Wednesday night after he and other officers kicked down a door inside a Bay Terraces apartment.

The shooting led to evacuation of residents from the 56-unit complex on South Meadowbrook Drive at Paradise Valley Road shortly after 11 p.m. and a SWAT standoff that ended about 6:45 a.m. Thursday after officers entered the apartment. The bodies of a man and a woman were found in a back bedroom of the home surrounded by guns, said acting Assistant Chief Jim Collins.

The officer, who had more than 15 years on the force, worked on patrol in the Southeastern Division, Lt. Andra Brown said. His name has not been released. A police dog also was wounded in the attack.

With the shooter barricaded behind a bedroom door, some officers carried the wounded officer down a flight of stairs while others were briefly trapped in the apartment. One officer climbed out a window and down a fire truck ladder to escape.

The officer died after being taken by paramedics to Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest.

The incident started about 10:45 p.m. when county probation officers and United States marshal's deputies were conducting a probation compliance check at a second-floor unit in the Canyon View Apartments in Bay Terraces, San Diego police Acting Assistant Chief Jim Collins said early Thursday morning.

The officers knocked on the door and someone inside who opened the door slammed it shut in the officers' faces, Collins said. The officers kicked in the door and took one man into custody.

He was walked down a set of stairs and the officers radioed for San Diego police to help them return to the apartment to contact other people believed to be still inside, Collins said.

Acting assistant chief Jim Collins spoke to the media after the two suspects were discovered dead in the apartment. (John Gibbins)

The apartment complex manager, who asked that her name not be used, said she was standing near officers and the arrested man when several San Diego patrol officers went upstairs and into the apartment's open front door. She said she heard them kick in an interior door, then a burst of gunfire.

Moments later, she said, she saw a wounded officer in uniform carried downstairs, bleeding heavily from his head or face.

Tenant Ryan Davis, who lives in a unit below where the shooting took place, said he heard officers yelling, "Probation officers!" and calling for someone to open the door. A short time later he saw more officers, who began to surround the building and evacuate tenants from other units before they went upstairs.

"That's when the gunfire started," said Davis, who recently completed serving four years in the Navy. "It had to be at least six to 12 rounds. It sounded like one shotgun, then handguns."

Collins said the first man taken into custody lived in that apartment. Other residents said the man lived there with his mother, and had a brother who was often there with his girlfriend and their child or children.

Officers radioed for emergency help about 11:10 p.m., drawing officers from around the city, and sheriff's deputies. About 60 officers, including federal marshal's deputies, DEA agents, probation officers and San Diego police, soon filled the street.

SWAT officers took positions around the complex and scores of residents were escorted away. Many of them, some in pajamas, some wrapped in blankets, and some barefoot, waited for hours in the parking lot of a market across the street for the incident to end.

The SWAT team fired a flash-bang round into the shooter's apartment about 2:35 a.m.

About 3 a.m., a man inside the apartment called 911 and told a dispatcher he and his girlfriend were hiding in a closet. The woman came out first, at officers' orders, and the man followed a few minutes later. They were led away in handcuffs.

SWAT officers fired rubber bullets through the windows, and about 4 a.m. fired numerous rounds of a chemical agent into the unit.

The standoff continued past 5 a.m.

Horace Smith, a resident at Canyon View Apartments for about six years, said he had often seen the resident where the shooting took place walking around the complex, but they spoke little to each other. He described the resident as an Asian man, possibly in his late 20s, with a lot of tattoos.

The apartment manager said the man worked at the Footlocker shoe store until he recently lost his job. She said his mother has been away for about a month.

The names of the people found dead in the apartment and of the two men and the woman taken into custody have not been released.

One resident at the complex said he saw an officer hit one of the arrested men in the head several times with his hand and tell the man, "You're a police-killer."