The San Ysidro McDonald's massacre was a mass shooting which occurred at a McDonald's restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, California, on July 18, 1984. The perpetrator, 41-year-old James Huberty, fatally shot 21 people, including a pregnant woman, and wounded 19 others before being killed by a police sniper approximately 77 minutes after he had first opened fire.
At the time, the massacre was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, being surpassed seven years later by the Luby's shooting. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in California history.
Chain of events
Prior to incident
On July 15, 1984, James Huberty commented to his wife, Etna, that he suspected he had a mental health problem. Two days later, on the morning of July 17, he called a San Diego mental health clinic, requesting an appointment. Leaving his contact details with the receptionist, Huberty was assured the clinic would return his call within hours. According to his wife, Huberty sat quietly beside the telephone for several hours, awaiting the return call, before abruptly walking out of the family home and riding to an unknown destination on his motorcycle. Unbeknownst to Huberty, the receptionist had misspelled his name as "Shouberty". His polite demeanor conveyed no sense of urgency to the operator, and he had elaborated in the phone call that he had never been hospitalized for mental health issues; therefore, the call had been logged as a "non-crisis" inquiry, to be handled within 48 hours.
Approximately one hour later, Huberty returned home in a contented mood. After eating dinner, Huberty, his wife, and their two daughters (Zelia, 12, and Cassandra, 10) cycled to a nearby park. Later that evening, he and Etna watched a movie together on their television.
July 18, 1984
The following morning—Wednesday, July 18—Huberty, his wife and children visited the San Diego Zoo. In the course of their walk through the zoo, Huberty told his wife of his belief that his life was effectively over. Referring to the mental health clinic's failure to return his phone call the previous day, he said, "Well, society had their chance." After eating lunch at a McDonald's restaurant in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego, the Huberty family returned home.
Shortly thereafter, Huberty walked into his bedroom wearing a maroon T-shirt and green camouflage slacks as his wife lay relaxing upon their bed. He leaned toward Etna and said, "I want to kiss you goodbye." Etna kissed her husband, then asked him where he was going, stating her intention to soon prepare the family dinner. Huberty calmly replied he was "going hunting... hunting for humans."
Holding a gun across his shoulder and carrying a box of ammunition and a bundle wrapped in a checkered blanket, Huberty glanced toward his 12-year-old daughter as he walked toward the front door of their apartment and said "Goodbye. I won't be back."
Huberty then drove down San Ysidro Boulevard. According to eyewitnesses, he drove first toward a Big Bear supermarket and then toward a post office, before entering the parking lot of a McDonald's restaurant approximately 200 yards (180 m) from his Averil Road apartment.
Shooting
At approximately 3:56 p.m. on July 18, Huberty drove his black Mercury Marquis sedan into the parking lot of the McDonald's restaurant on San Ysidro Boulevard. In his possession were a 9mm Browning HP semi-automatic pistol, a 9mm Uzi carbine, a Winchester 1200 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, and a box and a cloth bag filled with hundreds of rounds of ammunition for each weapon. A total of 45 customers were present inside the restaurant.
Entering the restaurant minutes later, Huberty first aimed his shotgun at a 16-year-old employee named John Arnold from a distance of approximately fifteen feet. As he did so, the assistant manager, Guillermo Flores, shouted: "Hey, John, that guy's going to shoot you!" According to Arnold, when Huberty pulled the trigger, "nothing happened." As Huberty inspected his shotgun, which was jammed, the manager of the restaurant, 22-year-old Neva Caine, walked toward the service counter of the restaurant in the direction of Arnold, as Arnold—believing the incident to be a distasteful joke—began to walk away from the gunman. Huberty fired his shotgun toward the ceiling before aiming the Uzi at Caine, shooting her once beneath her left eye. Caine died minutes later.
Immediately after shooting Caine, Huberty fired his shotgun at Arnold, wounding the teenager in the chest and arm, before shouting a comment to the effect of, "Everybody on the ground." Huberty then referred to all present in the restaurant as "dirty swine, Vietnam assholes," before claiming that he had "killed a thousand" and that he intended to "kill a thousand more." Upon hearing Huberty's profane rant and seeing Caine and Arnold shot, one customer, 25-year-old Victor Rivera, tried to persuade Huberty not to shoot anyone else. In response, Huberty fatally shot Rivera fourteen times, repeatedly shouting "shut up" as Rivera screamed in pain.
As staff and customers tried to hide beneath tables and service booths, Huberty turned his attention toward six women and children huddled together. He first killed 19-year-old María Colmenero-Silva with a single gunshot to the chest, then fatally shot nine-year-old Claudia Pérez in the stomach, cheek, thigh, hip, leg, chest, back, armpit, and head with his Uzi. He then wounded Pérez's 15-year-old sister Imelda once in the hand with the same weapon, and fired upon 11-year-old Aurora Peña with his shotgun. Peña—initially wounded in the leg—had been shielded by her pregnant aunt, 18-year-old Jackie Reyes. In a later account of the incident, Peña recollected feeling her aunt's body "bucking and jerking" as Reyes was shot 48 times with the Uzi. Beside his mother's body, eight-month-old Carlos Reyes sat up and wailed, whereupon Huberty shouted at the baby, then killed him with a single pistol shot to the center of the back.
Huberty then shot and killed a 62-year-old trucker named Laurence Versluis, before targeting a family seated near the play area of the restaurant who had tried to shield their son and his friend beneath the tables with their bodies. Thirty-one-year-old Blythe Regan Herrera had shielded her 11-year-old son, Matao, beneath one booth, as her husband, Ronald, protected Matao's friend, 12-year-old Keith Thomas, beneath a booth directly across from them. Ronald Herrera urged Thomas not to move, shielding the boy with his body. Thomas was shot in the shoulder, arm, wrist, and left elbow, but was not seriously wounded; Ronald Herrera was shot six times in the stomach, chest, arm, hip, shoulder, and—via a ricochet—head, but survived his injuries; his wife, Blythe, and son, Matao, were both killed by numerous gunshots to the head.
Casualties
Killed inside restaurant:
Killed outside restaurant:
Injured:
Note: * = McDonald's employee
Nearby, three women had also attempted to hide beneath a booth. Twenty-four-year-old Guadalupe del Río lay against a wall; she was shielded by her friends, 25-year-old Gloria Ramírez, and 31-year-old Arisdelsi Vuelvas Vargas. Del Rio was hit several times but was not seriously wounded, Ramírez was unhurt, whereas Vargas received a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. She died of her wound the next day, the only person fatally wounded who lived long enough to reach a hospital. At another booth, Huberty killed 45-year-old banker Hugo Velázquez Vasquez with a single shot to the chest.
The first of many calls to emergency services was made shortly after 4:00 p.m., notifying police of the shooting of a child who had been taken to a post office on San Ysidro Boulevard. The dispatcher mistakenly directed responding officers to another McDonald's two miles (three kilometers) from the San Ysidro Boulevard restaurant. This error delayed the imposition of a lockdown by several minutes, and the only warnings to civilians near the restaurant were given by passers-by. Shortly after 4:00 p.m., a young woman named Lydia Flores drove into the parking lot. Stopping at the food-pickup window, Flores noticed shattered windows and the sound of gunfire, before "looking up and there he was, just shooting." Flores reversed her car until she crashed into a fence; she hid in some bushes with her two-year-old daughter Melissa until the shooting ended.
At approximately 4:05 p.m., a Mexican couple, Astolfo and Maricela Félix, drove toward one of the service areas of the restaurant. Noting the shattered glass, Astolfo initially assumed renovation work was in progress and that Huberty—striding toward the car—was a repairman. Huberty fired his shotgun and Uzi at the couple and their four-month-old daughter, Karlita, striking Maricela in the face, arms and chest, blinding her in one eye and permanently rendering one hand unusable. Karlita was critically wounded in the neck, chest and abdomen. Astolfo was wounded in the chest and head. As Astolfo and Maricela staggered away from Huberty's line of fire, Maricela gave their baby to her husband. Astolfo handed the shrieking child to a young woman named Lucía Velasco as his wife collapsed against a car. Velasco rushed the baby to a nearby hospital as her husband assisted Astolfo and Maricela into a nearby building. All three members of the Félix family survived.
Three 11-year-old boys then rode their BMX bikes into the west parking lot. Hearing a member of the public yell something unintelligible from across the street as they began to dismount their bicycles, all three hesitated, before Huberty shot the three boys with his shotgun and Uzi. Joshua Coleman fell to the ground critically wounded in the back, arm, and leg; he later recalled looking toward his two friends, Omarr Alonso Hernandez and David Flores Delgado, noting that Hernandez was on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds to his back and had started vomiting; Delgado had received several gunshot wounds to his head. Coleman survived; Hernandez and Delgado both died at the scene.
Huberty then noticed an elderly couple, 74-year-old Miguel Victoria Ulloa, and 69-year-old Aída Velázquez Victoria, walking toward the entrance. As Miguel reached to open the door for his wife, Huberty fired his shotgun, killing Aída with a gunshot to the face and wounding Miguel. Two uninjured survivors, Oscar Mondragón and María Sevilla, later reported observing Miguel cradling his wife in his arms and wiping blood from her face, shouting curses at Huberty, who then approached the doorway, swore at Miguel, then killed him with a shot to the head.
Police intervention
Approximately ten minutes after the first call had been placed to emergency services, police arrived at the correct McDonald's restaurant. The first officer on the scene, Miguel Rosario, rapidly determined the location and cause of the actual disturbance and relayed this information to the San Diego Police Department as Huberty fired at Rosario's patrol car. Officers deployed immediately imposed a lockdown on an area spanning six blocks from the site of the shootings. The police established a command post two blocks from the restaurant and deployed 175 officers in numerous strategic locations. These officers were joined within the hour by several SWAT team members, who also took positions around the restaurant.
As Huberty was firing rapidly and alternating between firearms, police initially were unaware how many individuals were inside the restaurant. Furthermore, because most of the restaurant's windows had been shattered by gunfire, reflections from shards of glass provided an additional difficulty for police focusing inside the restaurant. Initially, police were concerned the gunman or gunmen might be holding hostages, although one individual who had escaped from the restaurant informed police there was a single gunman present in the premises, holding no hostages and shooting any individual he encountered. At 5:05 p.m., all responding law enforcement personnel were authorized to kill the perpetrator(s) should they obtain a clear shot.