Past Violence

Here are some previous gun battles in Southern California:

AUG. 1965--34 people are killed, including a firefighter and a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy, during five days of rioting in Watts. Rooftop snipers fire on police and firefighters.

DEC. 8, 1969--LAPD officers arrive at the Central Avenue stronghold of the Black Panther Party to serve arrest and search warrants. Thousands of shots are exchanged during the ensuing five-hour gun battle. Three officers and six Black Panthers are wounded. No one is killed.

APRIL 6, 1970--Four rookie CHP officers, responding to a call of men brandishing weapons, are killed outside a Newhall restaurant by two ex-convicts.

MAY 17, 1974--Symbionese Liberation Army militants engage three LAPD Special Weapons and Tactics squads and hundreds of officers in a two-hour gun battle at an SLA safe house on 54th Street in South Los Angeles. Six SLA members are killed. The shootout ends when a police tear-gas canister ignites a fire that engulfs the home.

JULY 18, 1984--Twenty-one people, most of them children, are shot and killed when a lone gunman opens fire at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, near the Mexican border. The gunman, James Oliver Huberty, fires 257 rounds from a variety of weapons until he is killed by a police sniper.

FEB. 5, 1988--Two federal drug agents are killed during an undercover heroin operation in Pasadena. After killing the agents execution-style, five suspects flee the scene with 15 DEA agents in pursuit. The chase through affluent San Gabriel Valley neighborhoods reaches speeds of up to 90 mph and ends in San Marino, where two suspects are killed in a shootout.

FEB. 12, 1990--Officers of the LAPD Special Investigations Section open fire on the getaway car used by four men who robbed a McDonald’s in Sunland. Three robbers are killed and a fourth is injured as the officers fire 35 shots. Police later determine the men were armed with pellet guns. A federal jury later found nine SIS officers and Police Chief Daryl Gates liable in the suspects’ death.

APRIL 29-May 1, 1992--A total of 51 people are killed during rioting following not guilty verdicts in the state trial of four LAPD officers charged with beating Rodney King. Gun battles involving looters, merchants and police--many of them captured on live television--erupt throughout a wide area of Los Angeles.

APRIL 20, 1993--A sniper opens fire at the MCA World Headquarters in University City, swigging from a bottle of liquor and shooting for about five minutes before surrendering to police. Seven people are wounded.