Skip to main content

On July 18, 1984, James Huberty entered a crowded McDonald’s in San Ysidro with a plan: “hunting for humans.”



On July 18, 1984, James Huberty entered a crowded McDonald’s in San Ysidro with a plan: “hunting for humans.”

Armed with a small arsenal of guns, Huberty instructed everyone to get down on the floor. He then began shooting the patrons point-blank, killing 21 and wounding 19 others. Huberty's youngest fatal victims were an 8-month-old baby, a 9-year-old girl, and three 11-year-old boys.

Huberty was killed by a police sniper approximately 77 minutes after he first opened fire.

Three days prior to the incident, Huberty told his wife, Etna, that he suspected he had a mental health problem. Two days later, Huberty called a mental health clinic, requesting an appointment. Huberty was assured that the clinic would return his call within hours.

They didn't.

On the day of the massacre, Huberty walked into his bedroom with a gun across his shoulder and told his wife, "I want to kiss you goodbye."

When asked where he was going, Huberty said: "Going hunting... hunting for humans."

In the months following the incident, several police officers who responded to the scene experienced symptoms of psychological trauma, including sleep withdrawal, memory loss, and guilt.

Two years after the massacre, Etna Huberty filed a lawsuit against both McDonald's and her husband's former employer, Babcock & Wilcox, seeking $5 million in damages. Huberty claimed that her husband's murder spree had been triggered by a combination of a poor diet and her husband working around highly poisonous metals without adequate protection over the course of many years.

The lawsuit was dismissed in 1987.

In a 2015 interview, Huberty's daughter, Zelia, who was just 12 years old at the time, said she watched the bloody tragedy unfold from her window.

“I had a perfect view of it,” she said. “I saw the car there. I saw everything. I saw people I knew, who I went to school with.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything at that time, except: ‘Better them than me.’ I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but as a 12-year-old, that’s the sort of thing you think,” she said.

Huberty said that if she could turn back the clock, she “probably would have killed my father before any of this occurred.”

Enjoy exploring the dark, uncensored side of true crime? Behind the Tape Photobook features nearly a thousand spine-chilling crime scene photos.

WARNING: THE PHOTOBOOK ISN’T FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!

Available in both e-Book and Paperback editions at thecrimemag.com/shop. Use the code FACEBOOK to get 20% off your first order!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

World War II as you've NEVER seen it before! Light-hearted photos of nude British and Allied soldiers revealed in eye-opening new book

  World War II as you've NEVER seen it before! Light-hearted photos of nude British and Allied soldiers revealed in eye-opening new book From the horrors of the Blitz to kamikaze attacks in the Pacific, World War II inflicted terrible suffering on troops and civilians alike. But as these photos reveal, soldiers fighting the war, whether in the Far East or Europe, did enjoy some more light-hearted moments. Hidden away in the attics of former servicemen for more than 60 years, the pictures, which show soldiers from the UK, Australia and the USA among others, shed fresh light on the friendships fostered between the men who fought. His extensive collection includes snapshots of soldiers and sailors from Australia, the UK, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the USA, cavorting on the sand in the South Pacific, shivering in the snow of Eastern Europe, posing solo in the barracks, and in great happy groups. Many are barely out of boyhood, at their physical peak and are responding to

A young man suspected to be a phone thief has been bu*nt to d"ath

  A young man suspected to be a phone thief has been bu*nt to d"ath in Goldie along Unical and Eastern Highway,  Calabar South Local Government area of Cross River State. According to an eyewitness, Benedict Ita, the incident occurred around 7am today, Thursday, February 22. Ita said that the suspect who was pursued from Unical axis to Goldie Cemetery was ly*ched alive by angry mob who were mostly students. He said that "he was begging for mercy but the mob comprising of mostly students who were determined to use him as a scapegoat over the incessant cases of phone snatching around the area paid deaf ears to his appeal. He was beaten very well before he was bu*nt alive". He added that "the boy who many said is a criminal known for phone snatching in the area  was chased from Unical side to Eastern Highway where he jumped to Goldie cemetery but the number was too large for him to escape". Also speaking, the victim who said he was a 100 level student of Ling

Undressed woman was observed standing on ledge outside kitchen window of HDB building in Yishun before she jumped to her death.

  Undressed woman was observed standing on ledge outside kitchen window of HDB building in Yishun before she jumped to her death. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has since issued a statement and rejected the claims, saying that the woman was not a domestic worker, in response to several social media posts that claimed the woman was a Filipino maid. On Thursday, October 12, the unfortunate occurrence took place in a HDB estate in Yishun. Social media users widely disseminated images and video of the incident. The images showed a woman standing on the ledge outside her kitchen window without any clothing on and holding onto the clothes drying rack before she collapsed. The woman was taken to the hospital unconscious and ultimately died from her injuries, according to the police, who said that they received a cry for help from Block 874 Yishun Street 81 around 7.20 am. Police investigations into the incident are presently taking place, and based on their preliminary investigation

My Shocking Experience With Patient In A Hospital

  My Shocking Experience With Patient In A Hospital I once cared for a middle-aged patient who presented to emergency with a dildo-related very embarrassing situation. He purchased the toy for one of his sexcapades. Curiosity hit. And he shoved the damn thing in his pooper, high-high up! “Me first” attitude didn’t do him much good. Funny feelings subsided fairly quickly and the horror struck when he couldn’t get it out. His drainage was jammed, the toy was slipping further up and after about 24 hours of wishfully waiting for it to naturally pass, it hurt bad enough to seek medical help. The official party line, that he vehemently iterated, was I just fell onto it, how else do you think it got up there! Needless to say, emergency surgery was necessary and he landed in the ICU with sepsis related post-op complications. It took him loooong before being able to use the toilet normally! Google ** NOT the patient’s X-ray, but it looked similar** Though I have seen some really absurd stuff in

Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Rape Scene), 1973

 Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Rape Scene), 1973 "Untitled (Rape Scene) is the documentation of an action that the artist performed in her apartment in Iowa City, while she was a student at the University of Iowa on the innovative Intermedia art course run by the German artist Hans Breder (born 1935).  It was created in response to a brutal and highly publicised rape and murder of a nursing student, Sara Ann Otten, by another student in March 1973. The following month Mendieta invited her fellow students to her apartment where, through a door left purposefully ajar, they found her in the position recorded in this photograph, which recreated the scene as reported in the press.  Some time later, Mendieta recalled that her audience ‘all sat down, and started talking about it. I didn’t move. I stayed in position about an hour. It really jolted them.’ (Quoted in Ana Mendieta, p.127, note 11.) In 1980, she commented that the rape had ‘moved and frightened’ her, elaborating: ‘I think all my wo

DOZENS OF MEN SAY SRI LANKAN FORCES R*P£D AND TORTURED THEM – ABC NEWS

  DOZENS OF MEN SAY SRI LANKAN FORCES R*P£D AND TORTURED THEM – ABC NEWS One of the men tortured in Sri Lanka said he was held for 21 days in a small dank room where he was raped 12 times, burned with cigarettes, beaten with iron rods and hung upside-down. Another man described being abducted from home by five men, driven to a prison, and taken to a “torture room” equipped with ropes, iron rods, a bench and buckets of water. There were bl00d splatters on the wall. A third man described the prisoners as growing accustomed to the sound of screaming. “It made us really scared the first day but then we got used to it because we heard screaming all the time.” R*ped, branded or beaten repeatedly, more than 50 men from the Tamil ethnic minority seeking political asylum in Europe say they were abducted and tortured under Sri Lanka’s current government. The previously unpublished accounts conjure images of the country’s bl00dy civil war that ended in 2009 — not the palm-fringed paradise por

When we got to that house, we were told that we were there for the sexual pleasure of the Japanese military

When we got to that house, we were told that we were there for the sexual pleasure of the Japanese military ...  We immediately started to protest. We said we were forced to, that they couldn't do this to us, they didn't have the right to  Doing it, it was against the Geneva Convention, and we never would. But they laughed at us, you know, they just laughed. They said they could do with us what they wanted. " One of the most heinous  war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army in Southeast Asia during World War II was the ruthless sexual exploitation of 200,000 Asian women (Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Filipino, Korean and even Japanese) and 200  -300 Dutch and 30 Australian women. During the war the imperial army, worried about the spread of venereal diseases, decided to open a chain of brothels in all the conquered territories in order to avoid this problem (this was an example of what had happened in India in the nineteenth century where the  he Bri

A Man's heart is terribly bleeding because the unthinkable have just happened

  A Man's heart is terribly bleeding because the unthinkable have just happened In this shocking news, a man has forced his wife and kid to do the unthinkable after he allegedly caught his woman cheating. A man has shocked his community members by doing the unthinkable after catching his wife with another man he suspected shw was having an affair with. The man man committed suicide on Thursday evening at Kwa-Kibathi Village in Nyandarua County of Kenya, after he had forced his wife and four-year-old daughter to take poison before killing himself. The man identified as Daniel Kihara Macharia is said to have seen his wife with another man in Nyahururu town on Thursday and later found the same man in his house when he went home. “I forced myself into the house only to find his wife and child lying on the ground unconscious while his body was dangling from the roof,”  said Mr Solomon Maina, a neighbour revealed. Nairobi News reported that neighbours rushed the woman and her daugh

An unusual vaginal injury in a young primigravida patient

  An unusual vaginal injury in a young primigravida patient: A rare case report Introduction: Assault with iron made belan causing penetration of it into vagina and perforation of posterior fornix is extremely rare. The commonly used weapon in assault are knife, wood, iron stick, wire, bomb or gun and most commonly affected body parts are cheeck, throat, back, abdomen, chest wall and extremities. Presentation of case: We report a case of iron made belan penetrated into vagina with posterior fornix perforation and mesenteric tear in a 30 years old lady with history of pregnancy of 14 weeks. She was haemodynamically unstable at the time of presentation. She was treated with advanced trauma life support Protocol (ATLS), taken to operation room where iron made belan was removed with repair of posterior fornix and mesentery was done. Discussion: Assault to genital organ in female is not uncommon. In present case the offender used the metallic iron made belan for assault which is the ho