A 77-Minute Moment in History That Will Never Be Forgotten

On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 18, 1984, James Oliver Huberty, a refugee from the Rust Belt of Ohio, walked into a crowded McDonald’s on West San Ysidro Boulevard packing three weapons: an Uzi semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol.

Having told his wife that he was “going hunting humans,” he opened fire. Over the next 77 minutes, he killed 21 people, 11 of them under age 18. He wounded 15 others; 9 of them were under 18. Some were shot with the barrel of the gun touching their flesh. The youngest victim was a 4-month-old baby. Almost all were Latinos.

The blood bath ended with Huberty himself being felled by a police sharpshooter who stood on the roof of the post office next door. Huberty, who, with his wife and daughters, lived in a small apartment a block away, was the 22nd person to die that day.

Mark on History

His crime came to be known as the San Ysidro Massacre, the worst single-episode slaying in the history of the nation. It eclipsed the 16 people killed from the top of the University of Texas tower in 1966 by Austin sniper Charles Whitman. After similar incidents in Edmond, Okla., and Stockton, San Ysidro’s is still the worst.

As grim as the moment was, it brought the only public recognition that would ever come to an unemployed drifter named Huberty, whose own wife said that he beat her and threatened her with guns. He would never be forgotten.

Nor would San Ysidro.

Until that day, said Andrea Skorepa, a lifelong resident of the border community, few people knew that San Ysidro is actually part of the city of San Diego.

Until that day, she said, few were willing to notice San Ysidro, much less listen to its howls.

Until that day, she said, San Ysidro was no more likely to have a street widened than it was to be the focal point of a housing program.

It was and is, she said, a place in need, the poverty-stricken fingertip of one of the country’s most prosperous cities, the first place that immigrants, legal or otherwise, see when they enter the United States through the busiest border crossing in the world.

Focus of Attention

“In a perverse way, some very beneficial things came out of a ghastly experience,” said Skorepa, director of the social service agency Casa Familiar. “One of the best is that we finally got attention. In a community like this, with so many needs, so many problems, just to get people to look at us was a victory. San Diego started to see us as more than the dirty little town on the border, and that was terrific.”

San Ysidro Boulevard was widened, and, for the first time ever, sidewalks were built. Palm trees were planted. Housing units were opened with city money. A master plan was developed by the American Institute of Architects. But

nowhere has change been more apparent than at the site where the killings occurred.

An extension of Southwestern College opened last August where McDonald’s once stood. With a capacity of 1,200, the campus enrolled 740 students last spring. In front of the school, a hand-lettered sign commemorates those who died. Silvia Arechiga, a spokeswoman for the college, said that 21 gold plaques will be erected as monuments to the dead, pending a $50,000 fund-raising effort.

Much of what happened in the aftermath of the shootings stirred controversy, but the site topped the list. A grass-roots movement sought to have the land set aside as a memorial park, to which many were opposed. McDonald’s razed the building in the middle of the night and gave the land--and the problems that came with it--to the city. The site was sold to Southwestern College for a charitable $40,000 with the stipulation that, if the college moved, the land would revert to the city.

The memorial represents a compromise between those who favored a park and those who wanted the memory of the moment banished forever. What better way, they reasoned, than to build in the shadow of a holocaust a center for higher learning?

Of course, for some, the memory will never disappear. Adelina Hernandez, 58, said that time stopped for her on July 18, 1984, when her son Omar was killed. A photograph of Omar lying dead on the sidewalk in front of McDonald’s, his bicycle crumpled on top of him, was published in newspapers all over the world.

“It’s like a deep, deep emptiness inside of me,” said Hernandez, who has always lived in the border town. “I cry every time I think of it. I used to look at life in a happy way, a sentimental way, a romantic way. Everything was nice and beautiful. After that, I became colder and harder.”

For Hernandez, the hardest anniversary was the first. And now her memories are “the worst” in July and December. A devout Catholic, she has not enjoyed Christmas since her son was killed.

Omar was 11, as was his friend, David Flores. Omar, David and Joshua Coleman rode their bicycles to McDonald’s for an ice cream cone. All were shot; David was killed, and, although wounded, Joshua said he survived by “playing dead” and tricking the murderer. Hernandez said Joshua comes to visit her every Christmas, and, once again, “it’s like talking to a little bit of Omar.”

Learning to Cope

For years after Omar’s death, Hernandez sought psychiatric help. Therapy inspired her to “give the love I felt for him” to children “who need it.” She works as a supervisor overseeing breakfast and lunch at Sunset Elementary School.

“I was always religious, but now I feel closer to God,” said Hernandez, who has three other children, all older than Omar. “When I pray, I feel closer to my boy. Because of him, I want to be a better person.”

Hernandez said that, for a long time, she blamed herself for Omar’s death. His outing to McDonald’s usually came in the morning, but, because her daughter had been in an auto accident and Hernandez had business to take care of, Omar’s break was postponed until the afternoon.

“A friend called and told me to turn on the television,” she said. “She said, ‘Something’s happened on the boulevard.’ You could hear the copters circling overhead. She asked where Omar was. I started calling all of his friends, but nobody knew where Omar was. When I got no response, my friend and I drove to McDonald’s.

“It was like a scene out of a movie. My eye was like a camera. I focused immediately on Omar, lying on the sidewalk, under his bicycle. I thought--hopefully--that maybe he was hurt or just lying still. . . . I didn’t want to believe he was dead.

“I wanted to go in the McDonald’s immediately. The police stopped me and told my friend that if I didn’t calm down they would send me to the hospital and give me pills to sleep. So I tried to keep my strength . . . until my fears were confirmed.”

A Bond of Grief

Maria Flores, 38, David’s mother, is one of Hernandez’s closest friends, and their bond has deepened through grief. (Flores, a cosmetologist, is a longtime resident of San Ysidro; she and Hernandez were interviewed together.) She, too, felt guilt, “as though I had killed David, letting him leave on his bike like that.” She said psychotherapy has given her the strength to have another child. The baby is due any day now.

Her other son, a 17-year-old, chose not to be interviewed.

“The grief is still too deep for him,” she said.

A corner in Flores’ bedroom is like a shrine to a fallen champion. A series of pictures on one wall mark the stages in David’s life, from infancy to the day he died. The photos are mounted in a circle, anointed in the center by a crucifix.

“ This is where I pray,” she said.

Flores’ happiest memory of David is his winning a contest just before he died. His was voted the best drawing in school. Hernandez glowingly remembered Omar being cast as star and director in a play.

The women looked at each other, and Hernandez started to cry. Flores said that much of the tragedy was to see two boys so full of love, boys who might have become painters or actors, gunned down by a psychopath. She called it “a waste of life.”

Shortly after 4 p.m., Albert Vitela arrived at the scene. At the time, he worked as a community service officer for the San Diego Police Department. His assignment: San Ysidro.

“Whenever I’d hear a call, I’d respond, just like any officer,” he said. “But there was something different about this one. The dispatcher said, ‘A girl’s been shot; she’s at the post office.’ There was a sixth sense, an eeriness, that something ugly was up.”

Vitela said that he and Miguel Rosario, the first officer on the scene, tried “to cross the parking lot three or four times to get to the kids. Joshua and Omar were lying by their bicycles. But each time we tried, shots were fired . . . so we held back. We concentrated on containment of the scene.”

Vitela, 36, now works in the forgery division. He has replayed the terror between 4 o’clock and 5:17 “a million times. Right now, I could draw a picture of the whole north side of McDonald’s. I remember the boys, the bicycles, the first lady out of the building . . . screaming . . . and my helplessness.

“For years, I kept saying, ‘What if? What if I’d done something different?’ I had been in San Ysidro six to seven years. I knew Omar and Joshua, worked with them at the Boys’ Club. I became a policeman to help people. I always felt I’d done what I was supposed to do, but that day it wasn’t enough. It says on the side of our cars that policemen ‘Protect and Serve.’ That day, I didn’t feel we did.”

In the years after the massacre, Vitela’s life changed.

He saw a psychiatrist. He grew closer to his children, feeling he might lose them. He left San Ysidro, taking a job at police headquarters, behind a desk, in an office. He got a divorce.

“I felt angry,” he said. “Angry with myself, angry with the system. Could I have done more? Could we have done more? I felt a lot of different emotions. Anger. Guilt. Helplessness. Anxiety. When I had time to reflect and let the wounds heal, I understood things better.”

Despite his feelings, Vitela is sensitive to criticism that the SWAT team should have gone in sooner. As it was, the killing continued for almost an hour and a half.

“With the sun reflecting off the windows, they carried a spider-web effect,” he said. “You didn’t know if he was shooting at you or not. We didn’t know who might be killed if we did go in. So we waited . . . for what was an eternity.

“God, I wish it had turned out different.”

Ann Ruiz’s memory of the day was watching television with Cassandra and Zelia Huberty, daughters of the killer.

“They showed the little baby, the boy on the bicycle, and Cassandra (who was 10 at the time) looked at me and said, ‘My daddy could not kill a baby,’ ” Ruiz said. “Two minutes later, they announced the SWAT team had killed the murderer.”

Ruiz was and is a friend to Etna Huberty, who, with her girls, never left the county, although she did move from San Ysidro. The Hubertys moved from the steel town of Massillon, Ohio, in 1983 after the closing of the Babcock & Wilcox plant, where Huberty worked as a welder fitter.

“The day it happened,” Ruiz said, “a farmer I know came in and said, ‘There’s a shootin’ at McDonald’s.’ So I turned on the TV. Then a mechanic I know came over and said, ‘Etna’s old man is shootin’ up McDonald’s.’ About that time, here comes Etna down the driveway. She says she can’t get home for all the cars, so can she come in my place.

“I dialed 911 and the police came and got her. The girls stayed with me, watching television. About 9 that night, one of ‘em said, ‘Where’s my mom?’ So I took her to the police station in San Ysidro. She was very upset.

“I’ll never forget having to console those girls, and Etna. . . . She cried for two days straight, saying, ‘He really did it to me this time. How will I pay for those funerals--those poor people! The son of a bitch left me holding the bag again, just like he always did.’ She just kept saying it over and over.”

Trying to Adjust

Ruiz said the widow is “doing well” now. She recently got a license to work in a nursing home. “She’s adjusted pretty well, but it’s not easy having to stomach what she has to stomach,” Ruiz said. “It’s a big burden. The emotional horror she and her daughters got hit with will stalk them the rest of their days. But the girls are big, strong, good-lookin’ girls. One of them works in a nursing home. She’s really good with old people.”

Ruiz, who serves on the board of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce, is a prominent figure in a community that in some ways resembles a town from a bygone era, a rural village or an outpost where everyone knows everyone else. She said she lost friends by not letting go of her relationship with Etna Huberty. The mother of one of the children killed was one of the first to say so long.

“I saw her on the street not long ago, and she refused to speak to me,” Ruiz said bitterly. “I guess she was never my friend.”

In June of last year, Ruiz gave a party. She said she invited Etna Huberty and the grandmother of one of the children who was murdered.

“I told her in advance that Mrs. Huberty would be there,” Ruiz said, “and really, it went fine. They were both ladies. What you have to realize is that down here most folks are Christians. They forgive. I think the woman realized that Mrs. Huberty had nothing to do with her grandbaby being murdered.”

Not everyone has made a similar peace. Aurora Pena, 11 at the time, was wounded by shots from Huberty’s gun. Her aunt, Jackie Wright Reyes, 18, and Reyes’ 8-month-old son, Carlos, were among those who died. After first agreeing to be interviewed, Aurora declined. Or, rather, her uncle declined for her.

“I just don’t want to talk about it, nor does she,” he said, asking not to be quoted by name. “We don’t want it stirred up again. Every time she’s reminded of it, she gets sick. It was a horrible thing, so please don’t remind us of it. I lost my sister in there.”

The man concluded by saying that in some ways, “it’s harder to deal with now than it was back then. . . . We want to forget it, OK?”

Linda Duran, 39, and Marie Ibarra, 42, would like to forget, too. On the day of the massacre, they were working in the post office as clerks. Both women still work in the San Ysidro post office. Duran, who lives in National City, works the counter; Ibarra, whose home is South San Diego, is a box clerk.

“We heard the shooting, and then a couple of bullets came through the window,” Duran said. “They grazed the top of the canopy over the counter. The supervisor screamed at us to lie down.”

“I remember a woman who’d been shot,” Ibarra said. “She ran in the post office with a dead look on her face and handed her baby (who had escaped injury) to one of the clerks. The woman lived. Willie, our maintenance man who was outside sweeping, saw the mother run in. The jacket he was wearing that day, he’s never worn it again.

“My husband was working as a carrier then. He delivered mail that day to Huberty’s apartment. He saw him come out and put the guns in a gunny sack. For a long time, he kept saying, ‘If I had known, maybe I could have done something. Maybe I could have stopped him.’ ”

“I went to a psychiatrist for a long time after that,” Duran said. “Now I know how Vietnam veterans feel, why some of them can’t cope with life. For a long time, I couldn’t . . . cope with life.”

Andrea Skorepa, the director of Casa Familiar, was one of those who administered the San Ysidro Family Survivors’ Fund, which paid $1.4 million to survivors and victims’ families. Strange as it sounds, she said, San Ysidro’s experience became a blueprint for how to handle a massacre.

Since July, 1984, she and others have fielded calls from Stockton, Oklahoma and England. Frantic voices on the other end seek advice and expert judgment.

Expect lawsuits, she warns. The idea that everyone will bond together in a feeling of communal good will is, she said, childish naivete. McDonald’s was sued by many of the victims’ families, even after the fund was parceled out; a judge threw the case out of court. Even Etna Huberty sued McDonald’s, alleging that her husband had been poisoned by the additives in the company’s hamburgers.

The Internal Revenue Service questioned the nonprofit nature of the victims’ fund and demanded payment. A settlement was reached.

“We became experts on tax law,” Skorepa said.

And be prepared for Hollywood. One producer cruised into town, hoping to woo the favor of the wounded and the bereaved. He stooped to using soap opera stars and “Tinseltown bimbos” as recruiting agents, giving rise to the truism, Skorepa said, that with a buck to be made, some people will stop at nothing. (The movie was never made.)

For the people of San Ysidro, she said, the moment filters down to a single reality. In the southernmost corner of San Diego, they know how it must have felt to be at Babi Yar, My Lai or Wounded Knee.

“On one afternoon,” she said, “we all had a shared experience. We came face to face with how vulnerable we really are.

“We’re different from people in Peoria. When we go to McDonald’s, we look around. We think about it. We’re alert. Because that moment five years ago will never really go away.”