SEAL BEACH – A Los Alamitos police captain and Westminster’s city clerk were found dead early Monday morning when a SWAT team entered an apartment with the help of a robot, hours after police got a distress call and gunshots rang out, authorities said.

The bodies of Capt. Rick Moore, 49, of Seal Beach and City Clerk Amanda Jensen, 37, of Garden Grove were discovered at about 2 a.m. in the 100 block of 7th Street, police said.

According to the Orange County Coroner’s Office, they died at 7:20 p.m. Sunday.

Hours after they died, police discovered the pair with apparent gunshot wounds, said Seal Beach police Sgt. Michael Henderson.

Sometime before 7:20 Sunday, Jensen called police dispatch, asking for help – but then the line went dead, police said.

Several gunshots had come from Moore’s apartment, witnesses told arriving police officers.

Seal Beach police have not said yet who fired the shots, or whether they came from a firearm issued by the Los Alamitos Police Department. But Henderson did say that investigators were not looking for suspects.

“I feel safe saying they were in a dating relationship,” Henderson said. “But they had broken up.”

Because police at the time didn’t know whether anyone was alive in the apartment, officers and SWAT personnel surrounded the area for hours. It was considered a barricade situation, with neighbors told to stay inside their locked homes.

Dozens of police units assisted Seal Beach police, including Orange County sheriff’s deputies and officers from Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Westminster, Cerritos and Fountain Valley.

No other sounds came from inside the apartment.

“After numerous attempts were made to contact the occupants,” Henderson said in a statement, “the SWAT team entered the apartment and discovered the bodies of two people.”

Craig Woods, 67, who lives with his wife, Sandra, two doors away from the three-story, cream-colored apartment complex, watched the scene unfold from his rooftop.

After 1 a.m., some residents heard loud noises.

Woods said he saw a police robot break out a window in the apartment before throwing in two non-lethal devices, meant to distract suspects, through the window.

“The robot looked inside the apartment,” Woods said. “It appeared to have some kind of camera to look around. Then they sent a police dog in.”

A dozen SWAT officers, weapons drawn, then went into the apartment, he said.

The incident has left three communities shaken.

Moore was a police officer for 12 years in the United States Army, according to his LinkedIn profile. In February 2008, he joined Los Alamitos as a detective. He became a captain in 2015.

Shelley Hasselbrink, the Los Alamitos mayor, said Moore was “a terrific police officer. … We’re a small city. So everyone knows each other.”

She said there will be grief counselors at City Hall to “help everyone cope with this the best they can.”

Greg Meier, who lives in the 21-unit apartment complex where the bodies were found and works as a maintenance man, said the man, later identified as Moore, had lived there for about four months.

“He kind of stayed to himself,” Meier said Monday.

Meier said the man’s girlfriend visited him and there had been some type of conflicts between them in the past: “It’s been a volatile relationship.”

Jensen’s death is devastating for Westminster, officials there said.

She had worked in the Westminster City Clerk’s Office for 11 years, as a deputy clerk and then as the assistant city clerk. She became the head of the office in 2015.

Chet Simmons, the assistant city manager, started as an intern with Westminster about six months after Jensen. Their offices share a wall.

“I’m still in shock,” Simmons said, his voice cracking. “I was devastated when I heard. She was one of those people who is always thinking of everyone else first.”

Grief counselors will also be at the Westminster Civic Center as long as people need them, Simmons said, adding that the city wants to be there for Jensen’s family.

Councilman Sergio Contreras said she was the mother of three children: two daughters and a son. The two used to chat about each other’s sons, both born prematurely, he said.

“It’s painful,” said Contreras, who received a text from the city manager Monday morning, asking the councilman to call him as soon as possible. “It’s like losing a family member. … It’s absolutely tragic.”

For Seal Beach residents, the scene surrounding the apartment Sunday evening and into the start of the workweek was all too familiar. In 2011, a gunman shot nine people, killing eight, at the nearby Salon Meritage.

“When something like this happens, it has nothing to do with the neighborhood,” resident Annie Nelson said. “And when something bad happens, it brings everybody together. We’ll all help each other heal, too.”