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July 14th, 1984 was just another perfect summer day in Southern California.
The perfect atmosphere for a frosty McDonald's ice cream sundae. Ah, Mickey D's. America's classic burger joint. Three little friends cracked their piggy banks open and rode their bikes to enjoy their favorite treat at their favorite place. As the kids ride into McDonald's, three gunshots rang out. The 11-year-olds crash. Two boys die instantly.
The shots continue on and on for hours and hours with no end in sight. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 71, the San Ysidro McDonald's murders. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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When Richard McDonald and his wife, Maurice, came up with the idea of opening up an all-American fast food restaurant, they had no idea that their vision would become the McDonald's empire it is today. Today, McDonald's has over 39,000 franchise locations worldwide and employs a quarter of a million people.
But what Richard McDonald didn't know was that his McDonald's restaurant in San Diego, California, would become the place of one of the most heinous mass shooting massacres in U.S. history. A little before 4 o'clock p.m. on July 18, 1984, a 41-year-old man left the house he shared with his wife and children.
On his way out the door, he told his wife, I'm going hunting, hunting for humans. After he closed the front door behind him, he got inside his black Mercury, drove to the McDonald's restaurant on San Ysidro Boulevard. San Ysidro is a town in San Diego, California County, just two miles north of the Mexico-U.S. border.
After the man parked his sedan in the McDonald's parking lot, he took four items inside the restaurant. A 9mm Browning HP semi-automatic pistol, a 9mm Uzi, a 12-gauge shotgun, and a bag filled with hundreds of rounds of ammo. When the man entered the McDonald's, there were a total of 45 people inside.
Many were customers and a handful were just employees. Within seconds of entering, the man pulled out his shotgun and aimed it at 16-year-old employee John Arnold. Before the teenager could even react, the man fired a single round directly at him. But when the man pulled the shotgun's trigger, nothing happened. The gun didn't go off.
The man grabbed the shotgun and attempted to figure out why his gun didn't fire. John Arnold and the other 44 people inside the restaurant started to panic. There's a guy in here with a shotgun. After the failed first shot, the man took his shotgun and fired a single round into the restaurant ceiling.
Realizing the shotgun was operating, the gunman aimed directly at 22-year-old Neva Kane, the restaurant's manager on duty. He fired one shot, hitting Neva behind her left eye. She died within minutes. Customers and employees began screaming and running in every direction to try and escape the gunman.
Some tried running outside of the restaurant. Employees were ducking underneath the front counter, while others ducked underneath their tables. But only half of these people would make it out of McDonald's alive. After the gunman shot and killed the restaurant's manager, he again aimed the shotgun at John Arnold, the 16-year-old employee. This time, though, the gun fired, and John was shot in the chest and arm.
Next, the gunman yelled, everybody on the ground. Everyone inside froze and got down on the ground. They did exactly what the gunman ordered. For the next several minutes, the gunman started pacing around the restaurant, going up and down the tables, shotgun in hand.
As he paced, he began referring to the people inside the restaurant as, quote, dirty swine Vietnam assholes. He started mumbling about how he'd already killed thousands of people and he intends on killing thousands more. While the gunman was shouting across the restaurant, one brave customer decided to try and take him down.
25-year-old Victor Rivera lifted his head off the floor and told the gunman he didn't need to do this. He pleaded with him not to shoot anyone. After hearing Victor's pleas, the man lifted his gun and shot him 14 times, killing him. After executing Victor Rivera, the man started pacing around the restaurant again. The customers and employees lay on the ground.
The man stopped in front of a group of six women and children who were all huddled together. He first shot and killed 19-year-old Maria Silva and 9-year-old Claudia Perez. Next, he shot 15-year-old Imelda Perez and 11-year-old Aurora Penna.
Before turning away from the group, the shooter shot 18-year-old Jackie Reyes 48 times with his Uzi and switched to his pistol to shoot and kill 8-month-old Carlos Reyes. After the group of women and children, the offender turned his attention to 62-year-old trucker Lawrence Verloose. He shot and killed him.
The crazed man targeted a family seated near the restaurant's playground. As the gunman approached the family, 31-year-old Blythe Herrera shielded her 11-year-old son by covering his body with her own. At the same time, Blythe's husband Ronald was doing the same for their son's 12-year-old friend, Keith Thomas. Like his earlier victims, the man showed no mercy on this family.
Ronald was shot six times across his body, although he would later survive. However, his wife Blythe, their son, was shot in the head multiple times and killed. As the shootings continued, the police received the first 911 calls just a couple minutes after 4 o'clock. San Ysidro police were notified about the shooting inside the McDonald's,
But the caller only mentioned that a girl had been shot, not that there was an active shooter. So when the first 911 call came in about the shooting, the dispatcher accidentally sent first responders to a different McDonald's location only about two miles away from the one in San Ysidro. A mistake that caused law enforcement not only to arrive on the scene for several more minutes.
Another problem was San Ysidro police officers thought that they were responding to an incident where a young girl was shot. They didn't know whether the girl was shot accidentally or if this was some sort of domestic disturbance inside of the McDonald's. The first officers on scene had absolutely no idea that this wasn't a simple case of a single gunshot victim. They were about to enter a life-altering moment.
The miscommunication allowed the gunman to continue shooting before the police could arrive to secure the scene. This meant other customers arriving at the McDonald's for lunch that day had no idea they were walking into an active shooting. Estolfo, Felice, and their four-year-old daughter peacefully walked up for lunch. The family arrived at the McDonald's and spotted shattered glass.
But they thought maybe the restaurant was under construction, so they went inside anyway. Noticing the family, the man lifted his shotgun and shot all three of them. Fortunately, all three of them would ultimately survive, but not without serious injuries. Besides the Felix family, three 11-year-old boys arrived at the McDonald's. The boys had ridden their bicycles there to buy ice cream sundaes, a McDonald's staple.
Completely unaware of what was happening inside, the gunmen shot and fired at the three boys. One survived, Joshua Coleman, while the other two boys were killed, Omar Hernandez and David Flores Delgado. Over 10 minutes passed when dispatchers received the first 911 calls and when the police officers arrived at the correct McDonald's.
The moment the shooter realized that the police had arrived, he began firing at the patrol cars. Police officers realized they were responding to an active shooter. Upon arrival, the first responders set up a six-block lockdown of the surrounding area. No one was allowed in or out of the area until the police could contain the situation.
By 4.23 p.m., a description of the shooter is broadcast over the police radio. But until the SWAT team commander is notified, police officers were not permitted to take down the shooter. For approximately 20 minutes, the local San Ysidro police cannot get a hold of SWAT commander Jerry Sanders.
An active shooter is firing endless rounds at law enforcement. The police need help from the SWAT team. They need sharpshooters if they want to have a chance at stopping this crazed man. SWAT Commander Lieutenant Jerry Sanders was at a charity event in Mission Viejo, utterly unaware of this incident.
Unfortunately, for over 20 minutes, his pager failed to receive the messages about the shooting. Now, this incident took place in the early 1980s. Even SWAT commanders didn't carry cell phones with them. They relied on getting notified of incidents via beepers.
So at 4.29 p.m., Lt. Jerry Sanders is finally notified about the shooting. And within minutes, he ordered hundreds of dozens of SWAT team members to the McDonald's. This team included a handful of military-trained snipers, tactical officers trained to shoot with a single bullet.
After the SWAT team was deployed, over 170 police officers from numerous law enforcement agencies arrived on the scene. And at 4.35 p.m., the first SWAT team sniper arrived and began taking their places on top of nearby buildings. With the SWAT team on the scene, officers were given the, quote, green light to shoot and kill the suspect if they got a good look.
When SWAT first arrived, they weren't sure exactly how many people were still inside the McDonald's. In fact, they didn't even know how many victims there were. All the police knew was that the gunman was still inside and he's still shooting.
At 5.05 p.m., SWAT Commander Lieutenant Jerry Sanders, on his way to the scene, hears over the radio that the officers were given the green light to shoot the suspect. But, for some reason, Commander Sanders decided to rescind that order. He told his SWAT team to stand back. They were given the red light. They were ordered not to shoot the suspect if given a chance.
Eight crucial minutes pass until the green light is reinstated. That meant that for eight more minutes, the gunman was allowed to continue to shoot, continue to kill anyone and everyone in his sight. It wasn't until 5.13 p.m. that Commander Jerry Sanders reissued the green light.
All SWAT officers received another authorization to shoot the gunman if they got a clear shot. This was going to end one way or another. What if I told you that in as little as 20 minutes a day, you could free yourself of chronic pain and muscle tension? Introducing the online course, Discover Somatics in 30 Days.
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To sign up for Discover Somatics in 30 days, visit movedeeply.com slash tails. At checkout, use the promo code tails to save 20% off your entire course. That's movedeeply.com slash tails. Promo code tails. Inside the McDonald's, the gunman turned his attention to the service counter where he found a portable radio.
He started scanning the radio stations looking for any news coverage of the shooting. He wanted to know what the police knew. But when he couldn't find any station covering the shooting, he switched to a music station. He listened to the music for a moment and then began shooting while he danced around. The shooter ended up making his way to the kitchen area, an area of the restaurant he hadn't searched before.
When he arrived there, he encountered a group of six employees huddled together. Up until this point, the employees thought that the gunmen didn't know their location. They thought they were hiding. It seemed like this discovery only angered the shooter more. After an hour of walking into the restaurant, how could he have not noticed that six employees were hiding in the kitchen?
So, he raised his gun, shouted, Oh, there's more. You're trying to hide from me. And then shot and killed Paulina Lopez, Elsa Fierro, and Margarita Padilla. Before he left the kitchen, he shot and critically wounded the other three employees.
For over an hour, police heard so many gunshots inside the McDonald's, they thought there must be at least two gunmen. They didn't think that it was even possible for one man to shoot so many times and shoot so quickly. While the gunfire continued to ring out, an employee somehow escaped through the restaurant's basement.
This employee ran across the parking lot, hands in air. He frantically told the SWAT team the gunman was alone, where his location was, and that he didn't have any hostages. With this information, the SWAT team's sharpshooters were instructed to shoot and kill if they got a clear shot of the gunman. Take him out.
At 5.17 p.m., about 75 minutes after the shooting began, the gunman walked from the service counter towards the drive-thru window of the McDonald's. In a split second, 27-year-old SWAT sniper Charles Foster caught a glimpse of the shooter through the drive-thru window.
Charles Foster was positioned on the roof of a nearby post office right across the street from the restaurant, patiently waiting for his shot. In that split second, the sharpshooter did what he was trained to do. He fired his sniper. In an instant, the sharpshooter fired a single round from 35 yards away. Bullseye.
The bullet pierced the gunman's chest, tore through his heart, and exited his spine. The shooter was down. Other officers of the SWAT team ran into the restaurant seconds later. They were completely unaware if, number one, their gunman was dead, and number two, if there were other gunmen. As the officers ran inside, a police sergeant pointed his gun toward the gunman lying on the floor.
Before he had a chance to react, the sergeant noticed a wounded girl on the ground. The sergeant asked the girl if this was the gunman. She nodded her head, yes. The entire incident lasted 77 grueling minutes. From the moment the shooter entered the McDonald's until the sharpshooter was able to take him out.
When all was said and done, the shooting left 21 people dead and critically injured 19 others. Only 10 people inside the restaurant were left unharmed. The luckiest of everyone were the six people who, after the shooting began, hid inside the basement utility room. The shooter never even knew they were there, or otherwise, they would likely be dead too.
Many of the victims attempted to address their wounds inside the restaurant using items like napkins. The killer shot 13 victims in the head, 7 in the chest, and 1 in the back. The victims ranged in ages from 4 months old to 74 years old. The majority of the victims were Mexican-Americans.
While the police were busy notifying the victims' families of the dead, other police officers were busy trying to discover the gunman's identity. The lone gunman of the San Ysidro McDonald shooting was identified as 41-year-old James Huberti. But once the police discovered who the shooter was, their work had just begun. They needed to learn everything about him.
What caused him to walk into a McDonald's armed with three firearms, leaving behind the deadliest mass shooting by a lone shooter in U.S. history? James Huberti was born in Canton, Ohio, on October 11, 1942. When James was only three years old, he contracted polio, a disease that left him with a walking disability, a physical disability he would carry with him the rest of his life.
As a young child, James' mother abandoned him and the rest of the family. This experience had a devastating effect on James, who loved his mother. After James grew into a young adult, he graduated from community college with an associate's degree in sociology. He then attended a trade school to get a license in embalming, the process of preserving dead bodies.
While at mortuary school, he met his future wife, Etna, a fellow embalmer. James and Etna married a couple years later and had two daughters together. But James and Etna's marriage wasn't exactly rainbows and butterflies. Their marriage was rocky, at best. Shortly after the wedding, their relationship with one another turned violent. Over the years, the police took countless domestic violence reports on the couple.
In the early 1980s, James was involved in a serious motorcycle accident, an accident leaving James with permanent injuries, including constant tremors in his right hand. The tremors got so bad, he ended up getting fired from his job. After the motorcycle accident, the family relocated to San Ysidro, California, where James found work as a security guard.
However, he was also fired from his job just two weeks before the McDonald's shooting. What happened on July 18, 1984 could have been entirely preventable. Authorities were alerted about James Huberty just three days prior. Well, sort of.
On July 15, 1984, three days before the shooting, James told his wife Etna that he had thought he might have a mental problem. After a little convincing by Etna, James called a San Diego mental health clinic two days later. On the phone, he requested an appointment to discuss disturbing thoughts he had inside of his head at the time. He was seeking help.
The receptionist on the other end of the phone took down James' information so that one of the therapists could call him back. However, when the receptionist took down James' name, she accidentally misspelled his last name as Schuberty, not Huberty.
Before hanging up the phone, the receptionist at the mental health clinic asked James if this was an emergency. This was common practice. This clinic is trained to take down names for appointments, but also to screen for mental health emergencies. But when the woman asked James if this was a mental health emergency, he simply replied no. He informed the woman he'd never been hospitalized before for mental illness,
And to provide some assurance to the receptionist, James spoke in a calm, cool, collected voice. Then he hung up. The call was logged as a non-crisis inquiry to be handled within 48 hours. But James, he wasn't waiting 48 hours. Throughout the rest of the day, James waited for the clinic to call him back with an appointment. But as the hours went by and no phone call,
He lost hope that the clinic took him seriously. Little did he know that the clinic did try to call him back, but with the misspelling of his last name as Schuberty instead of Huberti, this caused a mix-up in their phone system. The following morning, Wednesday, July 18, 1984, was the day of the shooting.
James, his wife Etna, and two daughters got up and decided they wanted to spend the day at the San Diego Zoo. Because James had recently been fired from his job as a security guard, he didn't have to be at work that day. The family arrived at the zoo for what was supposed to be a fun family day, but instead it took a turn.
During the family's walk throughout the zoo, James turned to Etna and commented that his life was pretty much over. When his wife asked him what he meant by that, he referred back to the mental health clinic's decision not to return his call. He told his wife, quote, End quote.
After James, Etna, and the two girls ate lunch at another McDonald's restaurant in Claremont, San Diego, the family headed back home for the day. Their time at the zoo was over. It was now time to relax at home, but James wasn't in the mood to just relax. Shortly after the family returned back home, James walked into the master bedroom where his wife was.
He was wearing a maroon t-shirt and green camouflage pants. As Etna lay in bed, James leaned over to her, kissed her, and said, I want to kiss you goodbye. When Etna asked where he was going, he made a chilling remark. He was going hunting, hunting for humans. He walked out of the master bedroom, grabbed a bag of ammunition and three guns from the garage.
Before he left, he passed by the bedroom of one of his daughters and told her goodbye and that he wasn't coming back. According to several eyewitnesses, after James left the house armed with weapons, he went to the Big Bear supermarket. Next, he made a stop in the U.S. post office branch before making his way to the McDonald's on San Ysidro Boulevard.
a location only 200 yards away from his apartment. After the shooting, the entire McDonald's franchise temporarily suspended all television and radio ads for the day. In the act of solidarity for the fast food giant, the company's rival, Burger King, also temporarily suspended all of their radio and TV ads. James Huberty's family became a family the entire country hated.
Although it was James who committed the shooting alone, in the days following the massacre, James' wife and daughters received countless death threats. People blamed the family for James' horrific actions. The death threats grew so bad that Etna and her daughters moved from San Ysidro to Chula Vista.
She even enrolled her two daughters into an entirely new school under fake names so that nobody knew that they were the daughters of James Huberty. In the days following the shooting, the San Ysidro Police Department was highly criticized for their response. Many were outraged that a shooting of this magnitude could go on for 77 minutes.
Others wondered why police officers didn't storm into the restaurant to take James Huberty down. But the San Ysidro Police Department defended their actions. Police Chief William Collender said that the idea of his police officers just storming into the restaurant to take the shooter down was, quote, ludicrous. He added that his officers never had a clear shot of the gunman.
He pointed to the fact that the McDonald's windows had been spiderwebbed by the bullets, making it incredibly difficult to see inside of the restaurant, let alone to try and shoot him. When police chief William Collender was asked about the eight-minute window where the police rescinded the green light order, he claimed that the delay didn't make a difference in the total death toll.
Collender believed that most of those who were killed by the gunmen were shot and killed in the first 10 minutes of James Huberty entering into the McDonald's. Now, this statement is something that survivors have highly contradicted. Survivors inside the McDonald's said, no, that was not true. They said that James Huberty continued to shoot and kill people for the entire 77 minutes.
Many survivors said that after he shot someone, he would walk back up to them maybe 15, 20 minutes later, and then he would shoot them a second time, a third time, a fourth time. So this idea of the police chief saying that the eight-minute window where they were not authorized to take down James Huberty, his argument that this did not make a difference in the total amount of dead,
because the police believed that he killed most of his victims in the first 10 minutes. Well, the survivors are saying, no, that's not true. Many of the victims maybe had been shot once during the first 10 minutes, but some of them were lying and they were still alive. But when the gunman came around 15, 20 minutes later, he was shooting them a second time and multiple times.
So at the end of all of this public criticism, the San Ysidro Police Department announced that they believed they handled the operation perfectly. They don't recognize any mistakes that were made that day. Within two days of the shooting, the restaurant owners began the renovation project of the building. Believe it or not, they wanted to get the McDonald's up and running again, even after all the bloodshed.
But following discussions between the restaurant's owners as well as community leaders, they decided on July 24th that the restaurant would not reopen its doors. After they reached this decision, the restaurant was demolished and the ground was donated to San Ysidro. And it was donated under one stipulation, that no restaurant could be built at this location.
The motive behind what happened on July 18, 1984 is unclear. We may never know why James Huberty decided to do what he did. Although we don't understand the motive, we can still learn from what happened that tragic day. These are lessons our country is still working on. Hundreds of people die every single year in this country from mass shooting incidents.
Because there isn't a universal definition of what exactly defines a mass shooting, we aren't even clear on how many happen. The most common definition we see that defines mass shooting is a shooting of four or more people in a single event. Some organizations out there will say three or more, while some list the number of victims much higher than that.
So because of this variance in reporting, the number of mass shooting incidents in the U.S., well, they may need much higher than even anticipated. Mass shootings is a topic that I've been incredibly passionate about. One of the areas of research that I focused on for my master's degree at Arizona State University was on mass shootings. Primarily, I researched offender characteristics as well as policy implications.
All my research has been founded on the idea of creating social change. As professionals in the field, and especially as policymakers, we need to develop policies that reflect current research. Now, more than ever, policy changes are required when it comes to mass shootings. This past month alone, there were over 30 mass shooting incidents across the United States. More than 30.
After each one, we say they need to stop, this needs to end, but it doesn't. Not until there's real social change, real policies implemented, that we will see a decline in mass shootings. If you're as passionate about this topic as I am, you can do something.
Write to your local representative or congressman or woman. Write to them and demand social change, whether you believe in stricter gun laws, universal firearm background checks. Whatever you believe in, find a way to get involved. We can do better, we deserve better, and we demand better.
To share your thoughts on the San Ysidro McDonald shooting, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Let me know what you think about the story. Also, to check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday.
If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon at patreon.com slash forensic tales. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We will have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
Thank you.
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