James Huberty

American mass murderer, the perpetrator of the worst single-episode slaying in the history of the United States. He killed 21 and wounded 18 at a California McDonald's restaurant before being killed by a S.W.A.T. sniper. Huberty's father, Earl, was a laborer. Isel, his mother, was a housewife who left home to be a missionary when her son was six. After this he felt abandoned for the rest of his life. He had an older sibling. Huberty met his future wife, Etna, when he attended Malone College, a Quaker institution that put a strong emphasis on the Bible. They married in the mid 1960s, and had two girls. A pale, gaunt man, Huberty had two definite sides, one romantic, tender and somewhat fearful of women and the other side brutalizing with macho tendencies. In the family photo album he was pictured with a rifle and beneath the picture was the caption "I'll give you 100 yards." His wife thought him incredibly weak in many ways. She was the one to control the bank account and when confronted she always fought back with equal or greater force. They fought and abused one another both physically and verbally, threatening to leave one another but never doing so. In 1971 he told her he wanted a divorce. She pointed a .22 Ruger at him, pulled the trigger and the gun jammed. He had loaded it with minimags, powerful bullets. The couple threatened to kill one another many times. After losing his job as a welder fitter at the Babcock & Wilcox plant in Massillon, OH due to the plant closing, he and his family moved to San Ysidro, CA in 1983. In February 1984 Huberty threatened his 12-year-old daughter with a loaded Uzi semi-automatic when she refused to ride with him on his motorcycle. He took her on harrowing, death tempting rides. He coated the leather seat with wax making it difficult to stay seated. Shortly after that he had a butcher knife at the throat of his 10-year-old Cassandra, saying "Someday I'm gonna kill you." His wife talked him out of it. Weeks before the killings Huberty threatened suicide then called a mental health clinic. They never called back to give him an appointment. At approximately 4 PM, PDT, on 7/18/1984, Huberty took three loaded weapons, entered a San Ysidro McDonald's restaurant and proceed to kill 21 people, 11 under 18 years, and wound 18, 9 under 18 years. Among the dead, the youngest was an eight month old baby, the oldest a 74 year old woman. S.W.A.T. snipers shot and killed Huberty at 5:17 PM, PDT. He had told his wife he was going human hunting. Huberty was cremated and his wife took his ashes back to Ohio to be buried. After his death she felt she was left "holding the bag" again. The Massillon papers attacked the family and she and her daughters moved to Chula Vista, CA where the girls entered school with assumed names. Their school in San Ysidro refused to re-admit them. In a newspaper interview after her husband's death, Etna Huberty told the reporter she had thought her husband might have been considered a battered spouse and that he would lose his temper and shoot a cop, not all the people in a restaurant. Huberty lost 80% of his kidney function in 1969 and was sick much of the time after that. In the final years of his life a series of debilitating car wrecks left him with whiplash and tremors and his behavior worsened. Link to Wikipedia biography