Quietly, He Walked Into McDonald’s and Began Shooting

My father, a homicide detective for the San Antonio Police Department, taught me a good deal about crime investigation. In fact, at age 18, I became the youngest licensed private investigator in Texas.

Most of my work at Texas Protective Assignments was investigations of all sorts. Bexar County Sheriff Joe Neaves actually used my services on investigations that he didn’t want his own deputies to bother with.

This included gathering information or penetrating drug or motorcycle gangs, to picking up prisoners from other countys, finding missing persons, to homicide investigations.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from Dad was about, what he termed “the invisible people.” I have written about this before, but basically it was to notice and pay attention to the less obvious, sometimes quiet people.

It’s easy to miss them. It could a mailman who you get accustomed to walking by every day. Perhaps it’s a worker on a telephone pole or in a bucket lift. Their tone of voice may seem nonchalant, but the information can be vital. It doesn’t mean they are a suspect or dangerous, but one may have information or noticed something.

One example, I remember us talking specifically about was the case of a man named James Huberty.

On July 15, 1984, Huberty commented to his wife, Etna, that he suspected he had a mental health problem. Just two days later, on the morning of July 17, he called a San Diego mental health clinic, requesting an appointment.

Leaving his contact details with the receptionist, Huberty was assured the clinic would return his call within hours.

According to his wife, he sat quietly beside the telephone for several hours, awaiting the return call, before abruptly walking out of the family home and riding to an unknown destination on his motorcycle.

Unbeknownst to Huberty, his polite demeanor conveyed no sense of urgency to the operator, and he had elaborated in the phone call that he had never been hospitalized for mental health issues.

The call was actually logged as a “non-crisis” inquiry, to be handled within 48 hours.

The following morning on Wednesday, July 18, Huberty, his wife and children visited the San Diego Zoo. In the course of their walk through the zoo, Huberty told his wife of his belief that his life was effectively over.

Referring to the mental health clinic’s failure to return his phone call the previous day, he said, “Well, society had their chance.” After eating lunch at a McDonald’s restaurant in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego, the Huberty family returned home.

Shortly thereafter, Huberty walked into his bedroom wearing a maroon T-shirt and green camouflage slacks as his wife lay relaxing upon their bed. He leaned toward Etna and said, “I want to kiss you goodbye.”

Etna kissed her husband, then asked him where he was going, stating her intention to soon prepare the family dinner. Huberty calmly replied he was “going hunting… hunting for humans.”

Holding a gun across his shoulder and carrying a box of ammunition and a bundle wrapped in a checkered blanket, Huberty glanced toward his elder daughter, Zelia, as he walked toward the front door of the family home and said, “Goodbye. I won’t be back.”

Huberty then drove down San Ysidro Boulevard. According to eyewitnesses, he drove first toward a Big Bear supermarket and then toward a U.S. Post Office branch, before entering the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant approximately 200 yards from his Averil Road apartment.

Huberty then entered the restaurant and fatally shot 21 people and wounded 19 others before being killed by a police sniper approximately 77 minutes after he had first opened fire.