On July 18, 1984, James Huberty entered a crowded McDonaldâs in San Ysidro with a plan: âhunting for humans.â
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.
âI had a perfect view of it,â she said. âI saw the car there. I saw everything. I saw people I knew, who I went to school with.â
âI wasnât thinking anything at that time, except: âBetter them than me.â I know thatâs a horrible thing to say, but as a 12-year-old, thatâs the sort of thing you think,â she said.
Huberty said that if she could turn back the clock, she âprobably would have killed my father before any of this occurred.â
To this day, the McDonald’s massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in California’s history.
