The Mysteries of History (July 18 Edition)
Mass Shooting at McDonald's
1984 — San Ysidro Mass Murder
public domain images from wikimedia commons
San Ysidro, California is just a couple of miles north of the Mexican border, across from Tijuana. On this date in 1984, a man went to a McDonald’s restaurant there — one-tenth of a mile from where he lived in an apartment with his family — but not to get some fries and a Big Mac. As he left his home that day, taking multiple semi-automatic weapons with him, he stated his intentions to his wife: “I’m going hunting; hunting for humans.”
It wasn’t just a sick joke. That’s what he did. He achieved his demented goal, killing 22 people there (one of whom was an unborn baby). Twenty of the 45 inside the restaurant were shot within the first ten minutes. The first several were women and children, including an 11-year-old girl, a nine-year-old girl, and a baby boy.
An hour later, an employee of the restaurant was able to escape from the basement, where some had hidden, and informed police that the shooter was alone (so many shots had been fired in rapid succession that they assumed there were multiple assailants), and that he had no hostages. At that, they were ordered to kill the shooter, which they did: a police sharpshooter shot him in the chest.
The 41-year-old shooter left a wife and two daughters (ages 10 and 12).
Questions: Did the shooter know he had mental health issues? If so, what did he do to try to get help, and how did that turn out, and why? Which other McDonald’s restaurant had the shooter visited that day, and with whom?