Gunman slain after killing 20 in McDomald’s siege

Press, 20 July 1984, Page 1

Gunman slain after killing 20 in McDomald’s siege

NZPA-AP San Ysidro, California A heavily armed Californian man opened fire in a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant yesterday, killing 20 people and wounding 17 more before he was slain by a police sharpshooter, the authorities said. The 90-minute rampage was believed to be the worst one-day slaughter by a single killer in United States history. “It was an absolute massacre,” said the San Diego police commander, Mr Larry Gore. “It is a total disaster inside the facility.” The gunman, identified by the police as James Oliver Huberty, aged 41, of San Diego, was killed by a shot from a police marksman who was on the roof of a nearby post office, Mr Gore said.

Twenty-one people, including Huberty, died and 17 were injured in a scene that police described as “a slaughter-house.” Four of the injured were in a critical condition yesterday. No motive for the shootings was known. The attack began about 10 a.m. (4 p.m. local time), at the restaurant, located about 1% km north of the Mexican border in San Diego County. “He came in and just said ‘freeze’ ... and then he just started shooting,” said one teen-ager as police took him away. The man, clad in camouflage fatigues and armed with an automatic rifle, a shotgun, and a handgun, was holed up inside the McDonald’s restaurant for 90 minutes, and “shooting everything that was in sight,” Mr Gore said.

Huberty “continued firing alternately from a rifle and a handgun, reloading one when the other ran out,” said a police spokesman, Mr Bill Robinson. “I am told that he came into the restaurant carrying rifles and just began shooting — everything he could shoot. It is just a tragic, tragic scene here,” Mr Gore said. At least six people were shot outside the restaurant, which is just off an interstate highway. The windows in the stucco and brick restaurant were riddled with bullet holes, and some windows and glass doors were shot out. Emergency workers removed several bodies from inside, and survivors were taken to a nearby building for emergency medical treatment. Agence France-Presse re-

ported that Huberty fired at police cars and fire engines when they arrived on the scene, and held several people hostage inside the restaurant before he was cut down. “There are two kids who just rode up outside and they were killed instantly,” a police lieutenant, Mr Bill Nelson, said. “There was a man and a woman walking up to the door, and they were offed just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. All the windows of the restaurant were shot out or riddled with bullets. Several bodies covered with yellow sheets were lying in the restaurant’s parking lot. One of the victims was an infant girl who was taken to the Chula Vista Hospital, where she died. Picture, page 6