James Oliver Huberty

American mass murderer

• Born: October 11, 1942
• Birthplace: Canton, Ohio
• Died: July 18, 1984
• Place of death: San Ysidro, California

Cause of notoriety: Huberty entered a busy McDonald’s restaurant and shot and killed twenty-one people before being killed by law enforcement officers.

Active: July 18, 1984

Locale: San Ysidro, California

Early Life

When James Oliver Huberty (HEW-buhr-tee) was seven, his mother abandoned the family to become a Pentecostal missionary. He was frequently teased by other children for coming from a broken home and for having spastic paralysis from polio. After graduating from the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science, Huberty got a job in a funeral home. Although his embalming skills were good, he was fired because of his unsympathetic demeanor toward the bereaved. Around 1976, Huberty began hearing disembodied voices. A successful career as a welder in Ohio ended in 1982, when he was laid off by the Babcock and Wilcox Company. Huberty, his wife Etna, and his children moved to Mexico briefly and then to San Ysidro, California (near the Mexican border), where Huberty earned a meager income as a security guard. He sometimes hit his wife, who did her best to shield the increasingly reclusive and hot-tempered Huberty from the rest of the world.

Criminal Career

On July 17, 1984, after being fired from his security guard position, Huberty called a mental clinic, and an employee promised to get back to him in two days to schedule an appointment. Worried that her husband might kill someone in the interim, Etna called every mental clinic in the area in an attempt to determine which clinic Huberty had called and to plead for an immediate appointment. However, because the clinic had misspelled Huberty’s name, there was no record of his call. Etna ignored one clinic’s suggestion that she call the police.

The next day, Huberty told Etna that his life was over and that he was “going to hunt humans.” Etna did nothing. A little before 4:00 p.m., Huberty entered a McDonald’s in a Mexican American neighborhood. Huberty had expressed his hatred for children and for Mexicans; he felt that Mexicans were to blame for the loss of some of his jobs. Using a 9 millimeter Browning pistol, a 9 millimeter Uzi pistol, and a Winchester 12-gauge shotgun, he began killing people. An assistant manager at the McDonald’s called the operator and reported a shooting in progress. The operator told her to dial 911; only after extensive pleading from the manager (noting that if she reached for the wall phone to dial 911, she would be killed) did the operator connect her to the police. Several officers finally arrived but did not enter the restaurant. The commander of the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team took almost an hour to arrive because of rush-hour traffic, and the SWAT officers would not act without a commanding order. Finally, at 5:17 p.m., a SWAT sniper, following orders, took a clear rifle shot at Huberty’s head and instantly killed him. In 77 minutes, Huberty had fired approximately 150 shots, murdered 21 people and wounded 19. Many of those who died bled to death while the police officers remained outside the building.

Impact

James Oliver Huberty’s life and murders were later carefully studied by George Hennard, who would commit a similar but deadlier mass murder in a restaurant in Killeen, Texas, in 1991. Gun control groups attempted to use the McDonald’s Massacre, as the event came to be called, to promote their cause; they met with little success. Furthermore, no changes occurred in the law enforcement policies of refusing to enter a building in order to confront an “active shooter” or of not allowing police snipers to act except in response to a command.

In 1987, several survivors filed a lawsuit, Lopez v. McDonald’s Corporation, accusing McDonald’s of failing to provide adequate security within the restaurant, but their litigation efforts failed. Also in 1987, Etna Huberty sued McDonald’s and Babcock and Wilcox Company, claiming that a combination of the monosodium glutamate in the restaurant’s food and Huberty’s long years of working with poisonous metals contributed to his delusions and episodes of rage. Her lawsuits were also unsuccessful.

Bibliography

Foreman, Laura, ed. Mass Murderers. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1993. Chapter 4 serves as an excellent survey of Huberty’s childhood, lifelong interest in guns, and descent into mental illness. Also provides extensive information about the victims, as well as the police department’s response to the killings.

Kohl, James. “Foreseeing One’s Duty to Protect.” Security Management 33, no. 9 (September, 1989). Analyzes the unsuccessful lawsuit, Lopez v. McDonald’s, that a few San Ysidro victims brought against McDonald’s for allegedly failing to provide adequate security.

Salva-Ramirez, Mary-Angie. “The San Ysidro Massacre, Ten Years Later: McDonald’s Actions Spoke Louder than Words.” Public Relations Quarterly 40, no. 1 (1995). Explains how the reaction of the McDonald’s Corporation to the massacre focused on providing all possible assistance to the victims and their families without regard for possible legal liability and how the compassionate approach left the positive corporate image of McDonald’s as strong as ever.