Six revolutionaries die in shootout
May 17, 1974: A deadly gun battle broke out after hundreds of officers surrounded a suspected hide-out of the Symbionese Liberation Army in South Los Angeles. Six people inside the house were killed when the building erupted in flames, possibly from tear-gas canisters fired through the windows.
In February, the SLA had kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst. In the chaotic aftermath of the shootout, some people thought she had been killed. She had not, but the SLA’s leader, an escaped convict named Donald DeFreeze, was among the dead.
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