The San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre

Summary

Morbid Podcast: The San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre
Hosts: Ash Kelley & Alaina Urquhart
Date: June 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

Ash and Alaina deliver a deeply researched, compassionate, and heavy recounting of the 1984 San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre, a mass shooting carried out by James (Jim) Huberty. This episode explores warning signs missed throughout Huberty’s life, failures in mental health support, the tragic details of the attack, the systemic aftermath, and the lingering trauma for survivors and the community. Woven into the narrative are reflections on mental health—especially men’s mental health—societal responsibilities, and survivor support, plus personal reactions and darkly humorous asides characteristic of Morbid.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Warnings, Mental Health, and Societal Failures

• Multiple Missed Opportunities: Jim Huberty's violent and disturbing behavior (racism, child and spousal abuse, fascination and obsession with guns, frequent threats) was known to many people in his life and yet he never received appropriate intervention.
• Men’s Mental Health: The episode coincides with Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, making the case especially relevant. Ash and Alaina highlight the historical lack of mental health recognition and support for men, especially in working-class and rural communities (“This kind of fits really perfect... they constantly talked about, like, destroying people’s bodies. Like, I don’t know.” – Ash, 07:48).
• Duality of Evil and Illness: The hosts emphasize that being mentally ill does not excuse violent or evil behavior:

  “You can be two things. Two things can be true at once. Absolutely. He can be mentally ill, and he can also be a really bad person.” – Elena, 09:00
  “He’s not nice. He’s violent to children, he’s violent to women. He’s horrible…” – Elena, 09:20

• Failures in Crisis Response: When Huberty actually reached out to a mental health center, the call was misclassified and his name misheard (“Schuberty” instead of “Huberty”), meaning no timely call back—with fatal consequences (12:25).

2. Jim Huberty’s Background and Escalation

Childhood Hardship and Social Rejection (14:24–18:37)

• Contracted polio, leading to bullying and isolation.
• Abandonment by his mother caused profound trauma.
• Began an obsession with guns as a youth, escalating over time.

Adulthood and Family Life (18:37–25:14)

• Unable to hold jobs or form meaningful relationships.
• Gun obsession grew into dangerous fanaticism (“No matter where he was... he could reach over and get a gun.” – Elena, 22:47).
• Regularly abusive and violent towards his wife and daughters; profoundly racist and antisocial.
• His family and neighbors lived in fear of his unpredictable rage.

Increasing Isolation, Paranoia, and Violent Delusions (35:09–40:45)

• After losing his job, Huberty sunk further into paranoia, blaming conspiracies, fixating on revenge, and directly telling co-workers he planned to “kill himself and take everyone with him” (37:17).
• Uprooted his family to Mexico then quickly returned, only bringing his guns and ammunition.
• Continued racism and inability to integrate added to his sense of persecution.

3. Events Leading up to the Massacre

• Failed Attempts at Security Work: Huberty, after training as a security guard, couldn’t hold a job due to his attitude and instability.
• Tipping Point: On July 15, 1984, he acknowledged possible mental illness and attempted to seek professional help, but was failed by the system (11:00–12:25).
• Day of the Massacre: On July 18, Huberty acted strangely calm, made chilling statements (“well, society had its chance” – 46:07), and left the house in a camouflage outfit with a bundle of weapons, telling his wife, “I’m going hunting. I’m going hunting, people” (46:56).

4. The Shooting: Attack & Police Response

The Initial Attack (47:14–55:13)

• Entered San Ysidro McDonald’s with multiple firearms. The restaurant was full of families and children (47:54).
• Immediately began shooting randomly and at high volume; victims included children as young as 8 months (75:14), families, and bystanders across the street.
• Several survivors recall the horror of the event—families hiding and using their bodies to shield children (50:14), desperate attempts to escape, and the confusion/chaos amid alarms and pop music Huberty brought with him (52:14).

  “Every now and then, he would fiddle with the radio, changing the station to find a song he liked, and then he would start firing wildly across the restaurant again.” – Elena, 52:46

Police Struggles and Delayed Response (54:11–67:43)

• Initial call misdirected resources, costing crucial minutes (51:22).
• Heavy tint and spiderweb cracks in windows made it hard for SWAT/snipers to see inside, and approach was dangerous due to Huberty’s fire (65:54).
• Survivors inside felt abandoned: “...after about 40 minutes, some people decided to make a run for the exits…” (62:53).
• Police and SWAT finally get into position after more than an hour. Sniper Chuck Foster takes his shot when Huberty becomes briefly visible:

  “As soon as Jim appeared through the broken glass of the front door, he fired a single shot that ripped right through Huberty’s heart, killing him instantly.” – Elena, 69:17

The Aftermath: 77 Minutes of Terror (69:18–70:12)

• In total: 21 people killed (mostly from the local Mexican-American community), nearly two dozen wounded, and countless others traumatized.
• Survivors would experience profound PTSD; children among them continued to suffer lasting effects.

5. Impact, Systemic Change, and Memorialization

• The tragedy exposed critical failures in the mental health and crisis response systems, directly influencing police procedure and language in future mass shooting incidents (79:47).
• The McDonald’s was demolished. In 1990, a memorial with 21 marble pillars was erected to honor the diverse ages and backgrounds of the victims (81:17).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On societal responsibility:

  “Sometimes it’s okay to reach out and say, yeah, hey, this person is speaking in a way that makes me think he might hurt someone. It’s okay. You can do it anonymously.” — Elena (07:53)

• On violent warning signs:

  “He always said that he wanted to kill a lot of people… If somebody is always saying that they want to kill a lot of people, you have a problem.” — Elena & Ash (17:08)

• On victim blaming post-massacre:

  “Why didn’t you try to bum rush him? … You don’t know what the fuck you would do. You don’t know what your fight or flight is gonna do in that moment.” — Elena (59:04)

• On the horror of the scene:

  “The alarms on, the fryers... were going off because the food was getting burned... whatever wasn’t being drowned out by the alarms was covered up. Over. Are you ready? The pop music blaring out of the portable stereo that Huberty had brought with him.” — Elena (52:14)

• On the importance of ongoing mental health advocacy:

  “Mental health care and treatment for mental health is—we can’t ever get too good with it, man.” — Elena (81:37)

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Important Timestamps

• Trigger Warning & Case Introduction – [06:05]
• Repeated Warning Signs Missed in Huberty’s Life – [07:05]
• Mental Health Crisis Call Mishandled – [12:26]
• Early Childhood & Polio Trauma – [14:24]
• Gun Obsession Grows – [16:37]
• Family Abuse & Dysfunction – [22:47], [29:38]
• Paranoia, Conspiracies, Job Loss – [35:09–40:45]
• Final Days Before the Shooting – [41:01–46:56]
• Massacre Begins – [47:14]
• Victim Testimonies / Horror of Events – [48:36–52:58]
• Police Response & Challenges – [51:22–67:43]
• Sniper Ends Massacre – [69:17]
• Death Toll & Victim Names – [74:01–76:19]
• Aftermath, PTSD, and Memorialization – [80:46–81:19]
• Lessons on Community & Mental Health – [81:26–82:28]

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Tone & Style Highlights

• Empathy for Victims & Survivors: The hosts speak with heartbreak, anger, and tenderness toward those lost and those who lived through the event, refusing to sensationalize the violence or focus on the killer’s grisly details.
• Blunt, Dark Humor & Realism: Ash and Alaina consistently call out absurdities and failures, from blaming “chicken nuggets” for the massacre (78:08) to the notion that abuse or violence can be justified by mental illness.
• Call for Action: They urge listeners to report disturbing behavior, de-stigmatize mental health discussions, and consider trauma when engaging in everyday activities like fireworks.

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Closing Reflection & Takeaways

• Remember the Victims: Reading the names and ages, the hosts ground this tragedy in its real human cost.
• Push for Change: They remind listeners of the moral imperative to strengthen crisis intervention systems, improve public awareness, and support survivors.
• Advocacy: They insist on the importance of mental health support, especially for men, and the responsibility to intervene when seriously concerning behavior is observed.

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Final Quote:

“If somebody says something to you that is so dark and chilling that it rots you to your core, tell someone.” — Ash (83:27)

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Epilogue: “Fun Fact” Segment

To offer brief relief after the heavy topic, Ash shares that “people once used corn cobs instead of toilet paper...” before closing with warmth, reflection, and a reminder to keep it weird—but not so weird that you ignore serious warning signs.

Transcript

[Elena]

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[Ash]

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[Elena]

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[Ash]

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[Elena]

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[Ash]

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[Elena]

Critics are raving that it is a

[Ash]

bone chilling horror that's biblically scary. It's gonna kill him. Leviticus.

[Elena]

Rated r and Peter's June 19th.

[Ash]

And get tickets now. Cape Fear is a new series now Streaming on Apple TV. This 10 episode mystery thriller is executive produced by Martin Scorsese and stars Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, Academy Award nominee Amy Adams, and Emmy nominee Patrick Wilson. When convicted murderer Max Cady is released from prison, he begins infiltrating the family of the married attorneys who helped put him behind bars. Every good detective needs a partner to support them on important cases. Think of a State Farm agent like your sidekick, there to help you along the way in your search for coverage. State Farm can help you choose the coverage you need, whether it's for your home, car, boat, or even rv. With so many options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you so you can get back to solving all of life's bigger cases. Go to statefarm.com or use the award winning app to connect with a local agent and get a quote like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

[Elena]

And I'm Elena and this is Polin Morbid.

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Elena]

Pollen is destroying everybody's lives over here.

[Ash]

Is pollen eating your insides alive?

[Elena]

Yeah. Is pollen. Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by pollen.

[Ash]

Everybody shoots hands in the air.

[Elena]

Pollen is rough right now. We had an air quality alert yesterday that was like, hey, you should probably stay inside.

[Ash]

I'm getting murdered by pollen.

[Elena]

Like, it's bad.

[Ash]

It's really, really bad. I've never had allergies this bad in my. I've never had allergies, period. Really. And I do be having not only allergies, but guess what? I have asthma.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

All of a sudden, the doctor said, honey, you have asthma. And I said, I haven't had asthma since I was a child. I thought it went away.

[Elena]

They said, no.

[Ash]

He said, it doesn't quite work like that. So Alena's taking one for the team and she took the up for me because I'm hacking up a lung.

[Elena]

I'm out of breath. Yeah. There was no way I was. I was going to make her Talk for an entire hour or so, however long this will be.

[Ash]

Honestly, you guys wouldn't have wanted to hear it.

[Elena]

Yeah, we don't need her hacking all over, you know, I don't want to.

[Ash]

I don't want to hack on you and what you're going through with pollen already.

[Elena]

Yeah. You know, but I do have something for you. Yeah.

[Ash]

Because it's my birthday today. If you're listening, yay. It's. It's like in a couple days, if from now. But if you're listening, when this comes

[Elena]

out, it'll be Ash's birthday.

[Ash]

So we have a sale for you on the Morbid Merch Store, which is at Sirius. Um, let me actually give you the actual website. Okay. So it's literally just SiriusXM store. And then there's another one for if you don't live in this country, and that's in our Instagram bio. Yeah. But the. If you use the code Ash sale, a S H sale, then you can get 25% off your order. Yay.

[Elena]

Do it.

[Ash]

It's really fun. We have a couple new things in the store. We have the candle, which smells so fucking good.

[Elena]

It does. We picked the scent specifically. We did.

[Ash]

We have the horned H hoodie, which

[Elena]

I'm really excited about.

[Ash]

We have the Nicholas shirt. If you're a Nicholas supporter.

[Elena]

I love the Nicholas shirt.

[Ash]

I've also seen a lot of you coming around on Nicholas.

[Elena]

I have, too. And it warms my heart. Yeah, it really does. And this shirt is how you can show your support.

[Ash]

Show your support for. For good old Saint Nick. Yeah. Who is not Saint Nick, but he's our Nick.

[Elena]

He's our Saint Nick.

[Ash]

We need to post one. That video from when we unpacked the printer.

[Elena]

Oh, yeah.

[Ash]

Because I think we can speed it up a little bit. And I think Nicholas visited us.

[Elena]

Yeah. I think Nicholas was helping me put away stuff from the printer that I was unboxing. And he was like, you have more room in this box. Let me push this stuff down for you. Because I was sitting there just watching as all of the packing stuff was being slowly pushed down.

[Ash]

And it was all like, obviously things rustle when you put them back in a box. So at first we were like, okay, maybe it's just that. But then it continued for three minutes.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And like, there was like one specific part in the video where it just like. Yeah.

[Elena]

Just pushes down.

[Ash]

Really pushes down, like aggressively. So I'm gonna post the sped up version of that.

[Elena]

It was a little strange. Yeah, a little strange.

[Ash]

Paranormal. If you will.

[Elena]

But, yeah, use that code. Ash sale.

[Ash]

Hell yeah.

[Elena]

25 off.

[Ash]

That's a good deal.

[Elena]

It's pretty sick. So if you are waiting, it's almost

[Ash]

like I'm turning 25.

[Elena]

Almost. But you're not.

[Ash]

I'm not. I'm not. Look at her now. She's calling me old.

[Elena]

I was going to say, you've had fun with mine. Now Ash is. Ash is the big three zero. Everybody spied my 20s.

[Ash]

I am having a funeral for my 20s.

[Elena]

Honestly, 30s are when things get awesome.

[Ash]

I'm so ready to leave my 20s in the dust. A lot of great things happened, like in the later years of my twenties, but like the early to mid of my twenties, quite mid.

[Elena]

Quite bit quite bad, if you will. Oh, well, we have today. This was Ash's case at first. So I got the pleasure of reading this and going, oh.

[Ash]

I said, here, I did half of

[Elena]

this and I said, oh, my.

[Ash]

I'll give you the other half.

[Elena]

Yeah. So I read through this and said, oh, my.

[Ash]

Yeah, I'm sorry.

[Elena]

We're covering the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre today.

[Ash]

This is a really, really brutal case.

[Elena]

Yeah. I would like to give a big, big trigger warning right off the bat. Um, I'm not going to. This isn't going to be gruesome in the sense of me explaining everyone's injuries or anything like that. This is a mass shooting that can be very triggering for people. I completely understand if this episode is one you say, hey, I'll see you on Thursday. Totally, totally get it. But again, I'm not gonna get crazy with my descriptions, but this is rough.

[Ash]

It is.

[Elena]

And it's scary and it's horrific and he's a monster and it's a really rough one. So I just. I need you to know that right out the bat, right out the gate, that this is rough and it's a mass shooting. So again, if that is something that you are like, this is just not one of the ones that I can do.

[Ash]

We totally get it. We understand.

[Elena]

Yeah, we totally get it. So, like, we'll see you Thursday if that's the case.

[Ash]

Yeah, we'll miss you.

[Elena]

We get it. But it is a story that needs to be told because one, these people lost their lives. Yep. These innocent people who were just going to McDonald's.

[Ash]

Well, there was just so many warning signs in this case from the time that Jim. Who is the Jim, the mass murderer, Jim Huberty. Just so many signs from the time that he was a small child. Like, he should have received Help?

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Like, I don't know exactly what help or what it would have done, but he needed something. He needed something.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And also, coincidentally, it's Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, so this is kind of a.

[Elena]

This kind of fits really perfect in this because. Yeah, there were several times that people around him said, yeah, it was so crazy. He, like, said he was going to kill everybody and he couldn't wait to, you know, shoot things into people's flesh. And. Yeah, he's a weird guy.

[Ash]

They constantly talked about, like, destroying people's bodies. Like, I don't know.

[Elena]

Some. Sometimes it's okay to reach out and say, yeah, hey, this person is speaking in a way that makes me think he might hurt someone. It's okay. Like, you can do it anonymously.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

This was in the, you know, this was in the 80s, you know, growing up in the 70s and stuff. Things were a little different, for sure. Like, it was not people they were not out here getting help for, especially men's mental health.

[Ash]

No. He grew up, like, in the Midwest, which obviously, like, is a totally different culture.

[Elena]

There were factors here that for sure, we can look back with the hindsight of 2026 and say, why didn't anybody do anything? And things were different. So we do have to use those lenses to look at it.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

But now in 2026, if someone around you is making these kind of statements or acting these kind of call someone, it's. So you see something, say something. It's like you can. You can do it anonymously, but, like, just whenever you can try to, because

[Ash]

you can avoid catastrophes like this. And also, like, that person needs help.

[Elena]

Yeah. Like, he needed to be this man needed to be. He's like a. He's like a bad person at his core.

[Ash]

Well, that's the thing. He's like.

[Elena]

He's like a mentally ill man at his core.

[Ash]

He's also racist. He's also. He beats his own children. Like, he's an abuser.

[Elena]

He beats his wife. Like, he's a. At his core, Jim, puberty is an evil piece of shit. Yeah. And that's the thing that I think we all need to realize is you can be two things. Two things can be true at once. Absolutely. He can be mentally ill, and he can also be a really bad person. Not everybody who's mentally ill is a really great person and they just suffer from this thing. Of course, there are plenty of people who are really good people who are kind and good people and suffer from mental illness and do things they normally wouldn't have done and don't want to do that is 100% often the case, to be honest. But there is also cases when somebody is violently mentally ill and should and does need extensive help, but is also just a really bad person at their core and would have done something bad regardless of the mental illness. Possibly. So Jim Huberty, to me, falls into that category. He's just a bad person. I agree with you. He's not nice. He's violent to children, he's violent to women. He's violent to men. He's violent to. He's horrible and he says horrible things. He.

[Ash]

He's just not.

[Elena]

Nobody wanted to be around him. Like, he just. Yeah. And he seemed like he was that way from pretty young. So. Yeah. So that is. That is definitely one of those situations here. And again, this is a tough one, but we're going to get into it.

[Ash]

All right, so everybody mark your timers.

[Elena]

Yep, here we are. On the evening of July 15, 1984, James Huberty and his wife Aetna were sitting on the couch watch tv when James, who was better known as Jim, casually mentioned that he thought he was experiencing symptoms of mental illness. Aetna had long suspected that something was going on with Jim. He had violent mood swings. He couldn't regulate his emotions at all. He had a crazy, explosive temper. He was very violent. He was also racist. And that was the first time she'd ever heard him acknowledge his struggles pretty directly.

[Ash]

I do wonder what all of a sudden made him realize that something was off, because like we said in the beginning, for so much of his life, it was like, that. I'm like, what?

[Elena]

He was tipping point for me. He was on the rails for his whole life. So I don't know what made him

[Ash]

just go, I think I need help.

[Elena]

I wonder if he knew. I mean, I think he did at this point. I think he said, I'm going to do something real bad.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

If I. And. And maybe there was a small part of him that was like, I should probably try to stop myself. And I wonder if he also was looking at this as okay if they accept me, because he does call for help. If they accept this and they help me, then. Then that's how it's supposed to be.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

But if they decide not, then they are proving everything that I believe about the government, about society, about human beings.

[Ash]

You're spot on.

[Elena]

And then they deserve it. I think that's exactly what his. And unfortunately, and this is another. This mental health help back then. Pretty bad. Pretty bad. And Even now, we always need to get better. So this is a good little thing about that. So, yeah. So Edna became even more hopeful a few days later when she noticed him on the phone with a local mental health center. So she was like, what are you doing? And he said he had called to make an appointment and at the time there was no one available to take his call, which already you're like, not good. What do you mean?

[Ash]

You know he called during lunch. On purpose.

[Elena]

Yeah, exactly. But the receptionist at the center took his information and said someone would get back to him within a few hours. Now, when he spoke to the receptionist, he was polite, he was calm, he sounded composed. So there was no reason for them to suspect this is back then, that he was in crisis. Now, we know now that someone in crisis is not always screaming and yelling and crying. They are not always saying something crazy or quote, unquote crazy that you think is going to, like, really cause some damage. I think now we're a lot more well versed on the idea that somebody in crisis is not always the typical crisis that you're thinking in your mind. But according to them, he didn't say anything to indicate that he was. So the call was logged as non crisis, non crisis. Calls were returned in the order they received, typically within 48 hours. Unfortunately, the receptionist also misheard his name when he gave his last name, and she wrote it down as Schuberty. Now, even more unfortunate, by the time his message came up in the queue to be returned, it was too late. James Huberty had already killed 21 people and was killed by the San Diego police sniper's bullet. So James Huberty's shocking killing spree and violent death was definitely just the period on a life filled with a lot of chaos and a lot of thing, a lot of, like we were saying, times when someone should have stepped in warning signs. He was born Oct. 11, 1942, in Canton, Ohio. He was the second of two children born to Earl and Eichel. Just a few years later, when he was three years old, Jim contracted polio. Yeah. And had to wear leather and metal braces for a long period of time. I mean, thanks to the braces, he was able to walk again. But they caused him to have a different walk than he might have had before. And according to one of his primary school teachers, that alone was enough to make him the target for bullies. And the other children made fun of him and were just.

[Ash]

Kids suck. Yeah.

[Elena]

Like, get it together and teach your kids not to be assholes.

[Ash]

How are you making fun of somebody with polio.

[Elena]

Thank God. If I ever found out my kids were making fun of someone for the way they walked, we'd have a talk. When Jim was 7 years old, his father bought a 155 acre farm in Mount Eaton that was about 20 miles away from can. And he moved the. Almost the whole family.

[Ash]

I should say almost.

[Elena]

Jim's mother was pretty resistant to the idea from the start and just refused to move with her family, which is wild. Instead she packed her bags, headed west and joined a Pentecostal missionary group, abandoning her entire family. Yeah. Great. So obviously this was extremely hard on Jim and his sister Ruth. And he would like, like his father would just find him like crying on like at various times all over the property. Yeah, just all over the property.

[Ash]

Which is really like, obviously you can feel bad for the kid version of him. That's awful.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

You had your mom for seven years of your life and then she's like,

[Elena]

she just abandoned you, cuz she's like, I don't feel like moving. Oh, okay, cool. No, at school, Jim was taunted and mistreated by, you know, his, By Pierce. From everything from his appearance, the way he walked, to the fact that his mother abandoned him.

[Ash]

Like, imagine people making fun of you because you're. You were abandoned as a child. What about that is funny?

[Elena]

I don't know. My brain can't wrap around it. It really literally can't.

[Ash]

What's the. And also just like what's the joke?

[Elena]

That's what is the joke?

[Ash]

Lol. Your mom left and it's like, yeah, okay, that's funny.

[Elena]

What is the joke? Like, I don't understand what the. Like it's so weird. So up. So he was unable to make friends a lot of the time. He spent a lot of his time alone or with the family dog. Just developing a really sullen and angry temperament.

[Ash]

Yeah, I feel like for children to be alone and isolated for too long,

[Elena]

being mistreated by their peers at the

[Ash]

same time is just truly a recipe for disaster.

[Elena]

Especially when nothing else is being done.

[Ash]

And then you have like abandonment from a mom. Can a kid up?

[Elena]

Yeah, obviously.

[Ash]

So just lots of little ingredients happening now.

[Elena]

When he reached junior high, he started to develop a strong interest in guns and shooting. And he would spend the rest of his life obsessively cultivating his own collection.

[Ash]

The word obsessive, it's like that doesn't

[Elena]

even begin to describe it.

[Ash]

He was. Yeah, he was a gun.

[Elena]

Yeah, he literally was. Now years later, his former co workers in Ohio would Describe him to a reporter as fanatical. That's not a good way to be with one supervisor saying he had a lot of guns. And he always said that he wanted to kill a lot of people.

[Ash]

If somebody is always saying that they want to kill a lot of people, you have a problem.

[Elena]

Because, like, also, what was your response to that?

[Ash]

Okay, Jim, like, also, this whole case had me wondering, does any place that he works have an HR department?

[Elena]

I. I don't know if HR departments back then were just, like, chilling. Yeah, I don't know what they were doing. But it's like if he's at work saying he has a lot of guns and he really wants to kill a

[Ash]

lot of people, you gotta call someone.

[Elena]

You gotta call someone. But at the time, he was just a lonely. Like, again, this was years later that that was being happening. But we're staying in the past here, because at the time, he was just a lonely boy who had found a way to pass the time. And in a rural place like Mount Eaton, guns and shooting were not exactly uncommon. It's not like this was a weird fixation.

[Ash]

Hunting was like a big deal. I mean, he lives on a farm now.

[Elena]

Throughout his high school years, he kind of kept a low profile. He didn't join any teams or clubs. He had, like, a few friendships. Maybe. He really just spent most of his time at home enthusiastically pursuing his hobby of guns. By the time he was in his late teens, he had become something of like an. He was like an amateur gunsmith, really. He learned how to make and load his own ammunition, alter his weapons, making small improvements to things like grip and sights.

[Ash]

Scary when you know what the outcome is for sure.

[Elena]

Now, after graduating from high school, he enrolled at Malone College, a small Quaker school in Canton, and he studied sociology there before dropping out two years later and moving to Pennsylvania, where he went to the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. After graduating in 1963, he found work as a mortician's apprentice at a local funeral home. And during that time, he became a licensed embalmer and mortician. His former employer, Don Williams, said, I told him he was in the wrong business. He was a good embalmer, but he just didn't relate to people.

[Ash]

Yeah, you don't say.

[Elena]

It turned out that at least on some level, Jim agreed, because within a year of being licensed in Ohio, he'd quit the mortuary business altogether and taken a job as an assembly line worker at a local factory. Changing careers wasn't the only big change in his life. At the Time, though, he'd also started dating Aetna markland, and in 1965, they got married at Trinity Gospel Temple in Canton, Ohio.

[Ash]

I just wonder, like, what their meet cute was.

[Elena]

I wonder what she saw in him. Right? Because no one liked him. Nobody liked him. He was very miserable all the time.

[Ash]

And I also just wonder, like, did they get through their first date without him mentioning that he wanted to kill a lot of people?

[Elena]

That's the thing. I'm like, he seems like he is just you. You see any of the people talking about him, and everyone's like, he was just a miserable person to be around, not because he was sad. All the. Was mean and said, like, horrible, scary, horrible, and would talk about killing people. He liked to talk about the different bullets and the, like, damage they inflicted on human flesh.

[Ash]

Like, nobody wants to talk about that.

[Elena]

What is it about him? I. I figured this is the kind of guy that would stay alone forever.

[Ash]

I know.

[Elena]

But, no. From the moment he first met Jim, the pastor who married the couple, David Lombardi, actually had reservations about the relationship and the marriage completely. He said he had real inner conflicts. By the time he was dating Aetna, he was atheistic and blamed God for taking his mother away from him. I'd like to point out that him being, like, leaning towards being atheist has literally nothing to do with, like, inner conflicts of this magnitude.

[Ash]

Yeah, I think. I think that's important to point out.

[Elena]

Like, you know what I mean? I think he has a lot of inner conflicts, but I don't think him being an atheist is one of them. I think that's. I'm like, okay, that's just the thing. Yeah. He also said that Jim was halfway intelligent, but when you dealt with him, you always felt a little uneasy about the way he harbored something inside. He was pent up. He was a loner, and he had kind of an explosive personality. Those are definitely his inner conflicts.

[Ash]

And that's what everyone said, specifically, explosive.

[Elena]

Even after marriage and buying a house, his interpersonal skills never got much better than when he was a kid and he was still struggling to control his explosive anger. Small conflicts at work usually escalated really quickly, with Jim taking out way more offense at some, you know, light things like teasing or perceived slights. Like, I don't like teasing either.

[Ash]

I hate teasing.

[Elena]

But, like, you can't explode and go off the handle at people. No.

[Ash]

And sometimes people are just trying to, like, have a good time. Like, I don't think they were necessarily, like, bullying him, you know?

[Elena]

No. And the best thing to do in those situations is to tell someone, like, hey, I don't really love. Yeah. Community. I really love being teased like that. It kind of like sets something off and they'll be like, oh, all right. Yeah, that's a trick. That's how you get to know people to tell you. And also that's how you teach people how to treat you. Yeah.

[Ash]

Because you.

[Elena]

That's what you have to do. Exploding in anger at someone because they do something like that won't get you anywhere. They're not going to learn anything except while you're an.

[Ash]

Yeah, I don't want to.

[Elena]

And it's like, if you just. I hate teasing. So there's been times where I've had to say to people, hey, like, I actually don't love that.

[Ash]

Like, don't poke me.

[Elena]

And they're like, oh, sorry. And then they know how to treat you. Yeah, teach them. Teach them, everybody.

[Ash]

It's true.

[Elena]

But even people who attempted friendly conversation or like small talk found him to be very unpleasant and all described him as hostile. His gun obsession got way worse as well. He covered his entire home in guns. His coworker, Jim, as Lanes recalled, no matter where he was sitting or standing in the house, he could reach over and get a gun.

[Ash]

To me, that's too much.

[Elena]

That's scary to me.

[Ash]

My personal opinion, I think that's too much.

[Elena]

My personal thing is, like, I don't have anything against guns. Like, if you are somebody who responsibly uses a gun. Oh, awesome. Like, good for you, man. Like, I really don't have a problem with it. If you are responsible with it, I fully support it.

[Ash]

Having.

[Elena]

I don't understand having that many. Yeah, but that's. I. That's just something I don't understand. I'm not saying you're a bad person for it. I just mean I don't get it.

[Ash]

Well, I also think, especially in this case, because later on he does go on to have two children. Guns should not just be accessible in

[Elena]

the home like that. You should not be able to reach anywhere and get a gun if you have, like, kids in the house. It's just not safe.

[Ash]

So dangerous.

[Elena]

It's just not safe. We've seen it. And again, Jim could also usually be found sitting by the front door of his house, door open, with a shotgun across his lap, like he was waiting.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And that's not responsible. That's not being a responsible gun owner. It was precisely that type of bizarre, threatening behavior that he was constantly exhibiting that convinced his co worker, Jim, as Lanes that he did not want to get to know him outside of work. He said it was little things like that just showed me there was something wrong with him, which is very astute. In 1972, Aetna gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter, who was followed by a second daughter two years later. If anyone expected fatherhood to change or soften Jim Huberty, they were going to be sorely disappointed. Not only was he unwilling to change his increasingly confrontational and reckless behavior because he saw no need to set the safety on any of his guns, even with toddlers in the house.

[Ash]

That's the kind of thing I'm saying is. It's like he was a very irresponsible gun owner.

[Elena]

Yeah. Just an asshole. Like, he literally didn't care about his kids. But he also seemed mostly uninterested in parenting altogether, which. Like, why did you have kids then?

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

Years later, after the couple moved to San Diego, many of the neighbors would recall that while Jim seemed to have a general dislike for most people, he seemed to loathe children, which, like, what's wrong?

[Ash]

How do you not like kids?

[Elena]

You don't have to be around them if you don't want to.

[Ash]

Like, I get it. Some kids are annoying, for sure. Like, I usually only like the ones related to me.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But, like, kids are adorable. Come on.

[Elena]

I. Here's the thing. If people make a choice not to have kids, more power to you. Yeah. Fully. Like, hell. Yeah.

[Ash]

Well, if you're making that choice, clearly

[Elena]

that's the right choice for you, because that's the choice. You're being a responsible human, and you're saying, you know what? I don't want that.

[Ash]

Right.

[Elena]

You don't need to have that or want that. Good for you. In fact, I applaud you. But when people make it their entire personality that they hate children, that's weird. That's weird because it's like, you don't need to have them. Yeah.

[Ash]

It's not a requirement.

[Elena]

So just don't.

[Ash]

I do.

[Elena]

Like, it's okay.

[Ash]

I will say, I think back then, it did feel like more of, like, a requirement. Like, it was like you got married and then you had to have kids.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And I think a lot of people feel, like, weird societal pressure.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Like, I'm sure Aetna did, you know?

[Elena]

Yeah. For sure. So.

[Ash]

But still, like, maybe not with Jim, babe.

[Elena]

Maybe not. Like, Jim. Jim doesn't seem like he's. He's great here. No. And again, like, him. Listen, like, loathing children. I'm like get over something.

[Ash]

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[Elena]

A former neighbor of his told the New York Times. Everybody talks about that here. He was always yelling at kids.

[Ash]

That would have pissed me off.

[Elena]

Now, when it came to the children in his neighborhood, Jim's frustration and anger was limited to yelling and calling them names, you know, nor normal adult behavior.

[Ash]

Look at him.

[Elena]

Just within his limits with his own children. On the other hand, he was known to have been verbally, emotionally and physically violent on one occasion just a week or two before the shooting spree. This is horrendous.

[Ash]

This is really awful.

[Elena]

By the way, the Huberties neighbor Wanda was surprised when Jim's older daughter showed up at her door with welts all over her face. And when she asked what happened, the girl replied her daddy had slapped her around. That's so sad, Jim Huberty.

[Ash]

And to just like say that so

[Elena]

openly, casually, like, that's clearly.

[Ash]

He didn't, he didn't give a. Because he's willing to send his daughter.

[Elena]

Yeah, he doesn't care.

[Ash]

And he knows she's gonna say what

[Elena]

happened and she's saying it like, isn't this just something that happened?

[Ash]

Yeah, that's what dads do, right?

[Elena]

Yeah. That's horrific.

[Ash]

So sad.

[Elena]

In the winter of 1971, their house caught fire. While they were all out of the house at that time, Jim was storing large containers of gunpowder in the basement. And when the fire reached that area of the house, it just went up in a huge giant fireball.

[Ash]

Like a legitimate explosion.

[Elena]

Yeah, like down to the foundation. But they actually bounced back pretty quick. And they bought a three, like a big three story home on the lot next to where their old house was. And then on the now vacant lot, they built a six unit apartment building that would eventually provide them extra income.

[Ash]

Imagine Jim Huberty being your landlord.

[Elena]

No thank you.

[Ash]

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure he didn't really handle anything.

[Elena]

Probably not. According to one author, any success that they experienced during this time was probably certainly Aetna's hard work. For most, if not all, of their marriage, she did literally everything. She managed the household, the children. She dealt with the world outside of the home because he couldn't. In the morning, he would. She would get her husband and children out of bed, lay out their clothes, pack their lunches, and get them to their various locations.

[Ash]

She had three children.

[Elena]

Yeah. And she was always going out of her way to limit Jim's interactions with the people around them. Terrified that any conversation or miscommunication would escalate into, like, physical violence or him exploding. Which gives. In this sense. I feel so horrible, because Edna obviously felt terrified. Like, this was her lot.

[Ash]

Well, on the other hand.

[Elena]

And she was just trying to limit his exposure to other people.

[Ash]

Exactly. And I'm sure a part of her was probably terrified to leave him.

[Elena]

Oh, she was probably horrified.

[Ash]

I'm not condoning the fact that she didn't, because obviously he's beating her and their children. Like, that's awful. But she's probably so scared. He has a zillion guns.

[Elena]

That's the thing. It's like.

[Ash]

And he's gonna see that as, like, another slight. Who's to say he's not gonna go after you and your babies?

[Elena]

And again, it's easy for us to sit here from a place where we have, like, loving, safe partners.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And say, you know, like, I would get out of that house. I don't know what that feels like.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

And I. And I can't sit here and claim that I do or feel like I would be the superwoman that knew what to do when our entire house is covered in insane amounts of guns to

[Ash]

the point where she will explode if there's a fire.

[Elena]

Explosive. And hurting all of us and threatening all of that. Like, I don't. That's living hell. And, like, I can't fathom that.

[Ash]

It wasn't easy for a woman in the 70s to break out on her own with two children.

[Elena]

No.

[Ash]

You couldn't even get a credit card.

[Elena]

Exactly. So it's like. That's horrific. It really is. Like, it's horrific. Oh, I hate it. It's so sad. But, yeah. She was always just trying to keep him from getting in trouble, essentially. And behind closed doors, though, he had no trouble taking out his anger on the entire family. She said. And this is so sad. It is. She said, quote, generally it was just one hit. But there were other times that he would beat them all relentlessly. He even threatened one of his daughters with a butcher knife once, literally.

[Ash]

And they're kids, like young kids. And I mean, I don't even care if your daughter's 35 years old and you threaten her with a butcher knife. What the fuck is wrong with you?

[Elena]

There's. He's a horrific monster. He really is. For just about anyone who knew, or even those who had just met him, Jim Huberty's rage and extremely unpleasant demeanor were definitely the primary problems. But just beneath that were other more subtle signs of emotional distress that generally went overlooked because again, that's the same thing. We're saying he's just a bad person. He's just a nasty, mean, violent, bad person who is severely mentally unwell.

[Ash]

Right on top of all.

[Elena]

And it's like he's probably one of the scariest types of people you can imagine. Oh yeah, because this isn't a kind hearted person who has a mental health crisis. This is a bad monster who is currently suffering really severely with mental health problems. It's like that is the worst combination I can think of.

[Ash]

Absolutely, truly.

[Elena]

Which makes me feel for his children and his wife even more because living with that is unthinkable because you just

[Ash]

never know what you're gonna get and

[Elena]

you just know it's all bad.

[Ash]

It's gotta be dark as hell.

[Elena]

Like there's no way of getting beneath this mental health crisis because underneath is a bad person. So there's no like light at the end of the tunnel with him. It's just really sad. But as early as the mid-1970s, Aetna started encouraging her husband to seek mental health like help, which like kudos to

[Ash]

seems like she was the only person that did that.

[Elena]

She was trying and in one instance Jim told her God and Jesus Christ were consulting him about the government and

[Ash]

President Carter, which is really, really, which

[Elena]

shows you right there he's mentally unwell. In another instance, Jim told a co worker he, and this is really sad, he'd killed one of his dogs for speaking to him. And he went on to explain that the dog hadn't spoken him verbally, but had communicated through his eyes in a way that Jim understood and didn't appreciate.

[Ash]

I can't imagine my co worker looking at me and telling me that like, that's chill you to your spine.

[Elena]

Scary. Now to Jim, everybody was always out to get him in one way or another. And in time he became consumed by his desire to get back at anyone who slighted him. If he received bad customer service somewhere, he would make harassing phone calls or picket the business. If a neighbor did something he didn't like, he would set up an elaborate scheme that took weeks of planning to get revenge on them. And while he knew he couldn't take out his anger on the neighborhood children physically only because he would get in trouble, that didn't stop him from enrolling his daughters in karate classes. Not for their own betterment. No. But so that he could direct them to assault the other children that lived around them, which, like, if you take

[Ash]

karate, you know, is the exact opposite of what they're teaching you.

[Elena]

They do an entire oath in the beginning that says that they will not use it for that. Right. So you're like. And you're directing your children to be your little agents of chaos, to go

[Ash]

beat children you don't like.

[Elena]

Beat children because you don't like them. Like, that's beyond.

[Ash]

Well. And then you're making your children pariahs like it's. You're continuing this awful, awful, toxic cycle.

[Elena]

Things in his life took a serious downturn in 1982 when, after 13 years of employment, he was laid off from his job at the factory. Just about everyone who knew him has acknowledged that this is where his life started really spiraling out of control, and he had done nothing to manage the stress. I mean, yeah, this is for sure where he spiraled. He was already. Nothing good was coming out of this guy. Like that was. He was not. He was not killing it.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

Now rapidly running out of money and sensing her husband was on the verge of a breakdown, Aetna put the couple's property on the market and gently approached Jim about what to do. Jim was too consumed with paranoia to be much of a help, and instead he spent most of his time focused on his belief that the factory closing was just evidence of a larger conspiracy to ruin him. And he was determined to get even with everyone telling one former co worker he was going to kill himself and, quote, take everyone with him. Guys, you gotta call someone.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Like he is literally spelling it out for people around him. What is everyone doing?

[Ash]

That's the thing.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Is it's like he is like, you just. He is spelling it out. It's.

[Elena]

Yeah. He's yelling it there to everyone. Those paranoid delusions got even worse when a deal for both properties fell through, and Jim and Aetna ended up selling their properties at a loss house. To Jim, this was just further evidence of the conspiracy. So he sued his realtor now, when everything fell apart for them in Ohio, Jim decided it was evidence of his long standing belief that the entire country was in fact, on the verge of collapse. Rather than relocate to any other city or state, he picked up his entire family in the spring of 1983 and moved them to Tijuana. When they left Ohio, he really didn't bother to bring much of their furniture or personal belongings. Instead of, he just filled the car with his massive gun collection and a stock, a huge stock of ammunition.

[Ash]

Those poor children. Poor children, to be uprooted from your already insanely dark and chaotic life and then packed up in a car with

[Elena]

a bunch of guns, filled with guns,

[Ash]

moved to Mexico where, like, you don't know anybody.

[Elena]

They don't speak the language, they don't speak English. None of them speak any of the language.

[Ash]

And then your father is this terrifying man who, like, nobody wants to be around. So you're even more isolated.

[Elena]

Yeah. And it's getting worse and worse. His delusions, his paranoia. So there's no shortage of, you know, irrational motives for moving the entire family to Mexico in his mind. Of course. Ultimately, though, they only lasted three months before moving back to the US because remember, he's also violently racist.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

So. And they settled in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego. Once they settled into their two bedroom apartment, it didn't take long for the old problems and bad habits to just crop right back up. Several neighbors recalled hearing Jim yelling at Aetna, the girls on multiple occasions. The one neighbor who lived next door told a reporter he'd never heard the couple so much as argue.

[Ash]

I think he just didn't want to get.

[Elena]

I was like, what? While their new neighbors initially tried to be friendly and welcoming, they became decidedly less friendly when Jim made his dislike of minorities known to everyone within earshot. Reporter Carlos Mezca said he was very anti immigrant. He hated immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants. So that's where we're sitting.

[Ash]

You're a terrible person.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And also, why move into immigrant communities if you hate immigrants? Why are you infiltrating their safe space?

[Elena]

Yeah, you're infiltrating their place.

[Ash]

Like you can go. I mean, you up and moved your family to Tijuana, first of all, when you're a racist piece of shit. So, like, make that make sense.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And then you move to San Ysidro, right?

[Elena]

Yeah. San Ysidro.

[Ash]

That's a very well known Mexican community. Like, Mexican community.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

What are you doing?

[Elena]

So go move somewhere where you'll. You can spout Your nastiness to other angry white people.

[Ash]

Yeah, or like what do you. Or go yourself.

[Elena]

Yeah, or go yourself. You choose. But like, why are you infiltrating their community and knowing about them? Right. Like what the. Jim never felt settled in California. If he ever felt settled his entire life. Edna said, in his mind, everything in Ohio was done right, and he could not adjust to the way things were done in California. So he was unemployed, surrounded by people he disliked because of his extreme racism, and the entire landscape was foreign to him. And in the past, he probably wouldn't have had any trouble finding a job as a welder. But a recent car accident had left him shaky, and that ruled out any work like that.

[Ash]

And I'm sure led to even greater conspiracy.

[Elena]

Exactly. Then one day he saw a newspaper ad for a federally funded job training program. It offered grants to low income individuals interested in training to be a security guard. So the course was several weeks long, and Jim excelled at every aspect, especially the target shooting.

[Ash]

He did. That's crazy.

[Elena]

Yeah. He was placed in the expert category. Once he'd finished the training, he was granted a two year registration as a trained security guard in the state of California. And he set about looking for work. In comparison to the training as a security guard, finding actual work was exponentially harder for him. On paper, he was an ideal candidate, but as soon as he sat down in front of potential employers, things would

[Ash]

change quickly because he can't speak to people.

[Elena]

Just a few days after completing the training course, he got an interview with Bernstein. Security Services owner Rudy Bernstein recalled. He told me how well he handled himself and how he would only work for top security firms. But he was put off by his arrogance, bad attitude and obvious lies. Yeah. After he left the interview, Bernstein took measures to ensure that the candidate was not going to get the job. He wrote NO in bold 4 inch letters on Jim's application and then traced over it again with a darker marker to make it clear.

[Ash]

Really making sure that took me out

[Elena]

when I heard that Jim did manage to find work with another security firm nearby in Chula Vista. Working the undesirable 8pm to 2am shift.

[Ash]

That's pretty brutal.

[Elena]

This guy with lack of sleep is probably not a great mix either.

[Ash]

More than just by himself at a post.

[Elena]

And when he wasn't working, sleeping or ranting, he was shopping, buying new guns, gun parts, military uniforms, you know.

[Ash]

So scary.

[Elena]

Despite their very limited income, Jim spent money freely. But whenever Aetna needed to spend money on essential items or something for their children, Jim would explode. In anger. On one occasion, when Edna told her husband one of the girls needed braces, he burst into the girl's bedroom waving around an Uzi, oh, my God. And shouted, why spend money on the girl's teeth? She'll be dead anyway.

[Ash]

Like, what the. That's also just plainly telling your wife that you're going to kill.

[Elena]

I'm going to kill all of you.

[Ash]

That's so.

[Elena]

And this poor, scary. These poor kids.

[Ash]

Well, think of, like, how old you are when you got your first braces. Like, you're a young teenager.

[Elena]

Like, and you're literally. Your dad is literally bursting into your room with an Uzi, shouting about how you're going to be dead anyways, so why do you need braces?

[Ash]

I so hope that these girls are doing okay now and, like, received the help they need because they.

[Elena]

Their childhood was some of the worst I can imagine.

[Ash]

I can't even.

[Elena]

While things at home were deteriorating fast, things at work weren't going very well for Jim either. His credentials and training made him a good candidate for the job, but his bosses at the security company were like, yeah, I don't know if this guy can actually do the job because he's wild.

[Ash]

He also, like, might just shoot somebody because he wants to.

[Elena]

He was edgy. He constantly seemed paranoid and jumpy. His attitude was terrible. He was exploding at people. He was just being Jim Huberty. Yeah.

[Ash]

Not somebody that you want on your property with a gun.

[Elena]

No. On July 10, 1984, he was fired from the security job after his boss determined he was, quote, too nervous for the work. Although he reacted to his firing about as well as anyone would expect, losing his job also seemed to be like a little bit of a wake up call for Jim. After his job loss, he started speaking a little more openly about his mental health and wondering out loud whether he should seek help from a professional. Which is what led him to place a call to the mental health center on July 17. But when Jim didn't get the call back in a few hours, he became irrationally angry and stormed out of the apartment. By that time, Aetna had become frightened for Jim's safety and the safety of others, and she started frantically calling mental health centers in the area, trying to locate the one Jim had called that day. She intended to tell the receptionist that, contrary to what he told them, he was, in fact, seriously suicidal or dangerous, homicidal even, and hoping that would be enough to get him an appointment immediately. Unfortunately, because the receptionist wrote his name down wrong, when Aetna did eventually land on the right mental health center. The person on the other end looked over the call log and told her they hadn't had any calls from someone named Huberty. Which I'm also, like, you didn't see Schuberty? And say, maybe they wrote it down wrong. Like, come on, come on, guys. Now, the next morning, July 18, Jim and Aetna were due in traffic court related to just, like, a minor infraction. According to the clerk on duty that day. He was. Jim was pleasant and waited patiently until his name was called, never becoming agitated or angry.

[Ash]

Interesting.

[Elena]

In fact, Jim even successfully managed to win the sympathy of the clerk, who, feeling sorry that the Huberties had to wait so long, canceled the fine altogether.

[Ash]

Wow.

[Elena]

After leaving the courthouse, Jim and Aetna took the kids to the zoo, where they spent a few hours walking the paths, looking at the animals. To Edna, Jim seemed uncharacteristically calm.

[Ash]

That's so scary.

[Elena]

Yeah. But every now and then, he would make a comment that she said she found disturbing. At one point, they stopped to watch the animals and. And apropos of nothing, Jim just said, well, society had its chance, and then walked away.

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Elena]

That would horrify me.

[Ash]

Honestly, I don't even know, like, what they would be able to do, but you have to call the police if your husband ever fucking says that to you.

[Elena]

Like, that's.

[Ash]

I suppose society had its chance.

[Elena]

Like, I don't even know. That's so scary.

[Ash]

And the fact that he was weirdly calm, that must have been really scary for his family. Sad that they couldn't even actually enjoy the fact that he was calm. And they.

[Elena]

Because they were probably. What does this mean?

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

The family arrived home in the early afternoon, and Aetna made lunch for the girls. When she finished cleaning up the kitchen, she went into the bedroom to lay down for a little while. A few minutes later, Jim entered the bedroom wearing a full camouflage outfit and carrying a large bundle wrapped in a black and white checkered outfit. And he said, I want to kiss you goodbye.

[Ash]

Oh, God.

[Elena]

When he stood up to leave the room, Aetna asked where he was going. And he replied, I'm going hunting. I'm going hunting, people.

[Ash]

Did she call someone? We're gonna move forward. Okay.

[Elena]

From the balcony of the apartment, one of their daughters watched as her father loaded this bundle into the car, then pulled out the parking lot, drove the 200 or so yards down the street, where he pulled into the parking lot of the post office just across from the McDonald's. This was only 200 yards away from his house.

[Ash]

See it? Probably.

[Elena]

The restaurant was very popular in the neighborhood and was a place parents frequently bought their children to play. So that afternoon there were about 50 people inside. It was about 4pm when John Arnold clocked in for a shift at McDonald's. He was standing at the register, but he didn't see Jim Huberty come through the door. All he remembers was hearing his co worker Guillermo Flores yell, hey, John, that guy's gonna shoot you.

[Ash]

Oh my God.

[Elena]

Arnold turned around and saw Huberty pointing a shotgun in his direction. He said he was pointing that gun right at me. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Then he brought it down and started messing with it. When Jim lowered the gun, John relaxed a little, thinking like, was this just a prank? Like, what is this?

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

But it wasn't the guy. The gun had just jammed. Hubert. He fiddled with the shotgun briefly before finally clearing the jam and firing it into the ceiling. The noise got everyone's attention, which is when Jim pulled out his 9 millimeter semi automatic Uzi from the bundle he was carrying and fired at 22 year old manager Neva Kane, hitting her several times before she dropped to the ground.

[Ash]

Oh my God.

[Elena]

Employee Albert Leo said, I saw him come in and tell everyone to get to the floor. Then he just started shooting at everyone. The people who tried to get out to run out of the McDonald's. He started shooting at them, waving his gun around furiously. He shouted, I'm going to kill you all. He then referred to everyone in the restaurant as dirty swine, telling them he'd killed many in Vietnam and he was going to kill a thousand more. Jesus. He had not served in Vietnam. Yeah. He tried to enlist but was deemed unfit for service. I wonder why. But in that moment, none of that matters.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

After killing Neva Kane Hubert, he turned and began firing through the windows at the people across the street at the donut shop. 12 year old Joshua Coleman and his friends David Flores and Omar Hernandez had gone to the shop to get ice cream that afternoon and were walking out just as he started shooting in their direction. Flores was killed immediately walking out with his ice cream.

[Ash]

A 12 year old with his friends.

[Elena]

Yeah. Omar Hernandez was shot multiple times and ended up dying on the ground. Joshua Coleman was hit in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Coleman was panicked and terrified that if he moved, the shooter would realize he was still alive and fire at him again. So he stayed completely still, struggling to breathe. He was shot in the chest. He later said, I needed air and I couldn't get Enough. I had to take short, quick breaths.

[Ash]

Oh, God.

[Elena]

Inside the McDonald's, Jim turned his gun on the families in the play area, firing indiscriminately into the crowd as parents just grabbed their children and huddled under the stone tables.

[Ash]

This is nightmare is not even the correct word.

[Elena]

Keith Thomas later recalled. We got under the table and I got shot in both arms. He was a kid.

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Elena]

That afternoon, Keith had gone out to a late lunch with his best friend, Mateo Herrera, and Mateo's father, Ronald. With the two boys squeezed beneath the table, Ronald, the father, shielded them both with his own body. But in the end, it wasn't enough. Mateo was shot and killed, and Keith was shot seven times. Oh, my God. But Keith credits Ronald with saving his life that day.

[Ash]

Seven times.

[Elena]

And that's like his best friend's father saved him with his own body.

[Ash]

That's the thing. The heroes that come out of these stories.

[Elena]

Oh, it, like, shatters your heart.

[Ash]

People that literally shield others with their own.

[Elena]

No one should have to do this.

[Ash]

No, it's. There should not be such thing as a human shield.

[Elena]

No. The first call came into San Diego 911 a few minutes after the shooting started when someone dragged one of the victims, a young girl, off the sidewalk and into the post office across the street. Officer Miguel Rosario said the call came in, if I can remember, as some type of disturbance where a little girl had been shot. I had no clue what I was about to enter into.

[Ash]

God.

[Elena]

Communication here is awful.

[Ash]

From start to finish in this story,

[Elena]

at that time, there were two McDonald's restaurants in San Ysidro, one on the west side and one on the east side. Because there was some confusion around where the incident was taking place, Rosario was dispatched to the wrong location and didn't receive the correction until he was about a block away from the east side McDonald's. As a result, emergency services were delayed by anywhere between three and five minutes as the officer had to backtrack and make his way to the right location.

[Ash]

Three and five minutes is huge. Huge. Oh, my God.

[Elena]

Inside the restaurant, everything was chaos. The alarms. This is, for some reason this detail sent me. The alarms on, the fryers and other heating elements were all going off because the food was getting burned because it's.

[Ash]

It's just madness.

[Elena]

So now people are crying, screaming and moaning in pain, and there's fryer alarms going off and, like, other heating element things just being like. Like, just crazy. And then on top of that, whatever wasn't being drowned out by the alarms was covered up. Over. Are you ready? The pop music blaring out of the portable stereo that Huberty had brought with him. No. Every now and then, he would fiddle with the radio, changing the station to find a song he liked, and then he would start firing wildly across the restaurant again.

[Ash]

Oh, my God. I never got to that detail. No, I thought you were gonna say the pop music, like, over the McDonald's.

[Elena]

No, he brought his own and would

[Ash]

change it to a song, Change the stereotype.

[Elena]

He didn't like a song.

[Ash]

That just made me, like, physically ill.

[Elena]

Like, that is beyond evil. An outside local reporter, Carlos Emezca, happened to be coming out of the post office when the shooting started, making him the first reporter on the scene. Oh, my God, he said later, before I could even realize it, I heard the whistles of shots going by my head. I hit the ground so hard that I thought I'd been shot because I had blood on my face and hands. I'd actually hit my nose on the pavement.

[Ash]

Oh, my gosh.

[Elena]

As Carlos scrambled for cover behind the cars, Miguel Rosarios finally arrived, pulling his patrol car into the parking lot of the post office. And remember, he was the one that was sent to the wrong location. And it's just him at that point, Rosario still hadn't been informed of exactly what was going on, so he thought it might have been a robbery or other public disturbance. He later said, walking to the post office is when I first realized something was very wrong. People were hiding behind cars. They were looking towards the McDonald's. So he looked in the direction of the restaurant just in time to see Jim Huberty raise the Uzi in his direction and fire. Oh, my God. He was able to dive behind a truck to avoid being hit. The COVID gave him just enough time to radio for backup and tell them,

[Ash]

hey, get here now. Get the fuck over here to the correct McDonald's.

[Elena]

His call went out at 4:10pm 10 minutes into the assault.

[Ash]

And you have to think about 10, literally, honestly, set a timer for 10 minutes. That is such a long time in this kind of situation, because you hear

[Elena]

10 minutes and you go, 10 minutes. Like, oh, I'll be there in 10 minutes. It's no big deal. Like, that sounds like whatever. Sit for 10 minutes.

[Ash]

10 minutes. I set a timer at night for my mouthwash for one minute. And it's like an entire one minute is so long. Like, it's crazy.

[Elena]

I set a timer for two minutes every time the girls brush, brush their teeth. And even I'm like, oh, my God, are you supposed to be brushing for this long. That's a long time. So 10 minutes in this. 10 minutes sitting there is a long time. 10 minutes in this kind of absolute nightmare scenario.

[Ash]

And this man has got. I don't even know how many guns you said.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And how much ammunition. It's like he knows how to make his own ammunition. So it probably is.

[Elena]

Oh, he had hundreds. He was able to get off hundreds of rounds.

[Ash]

Hundreds of rounds in a McDonald's where families went to play with their kids.

[Elena]

And he knew that.

[Ash]

I so wish that in a. In a strange way, because we already know. I wish that he hadn't been killed. And I wish that he was sitting in prison to this day. Me too.

[Elena]

Just rotted. Tortured. Yeah.

[Ash]

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[Elena]

Now. Later, after everyone had learned the full details of the massacre, several people did question why no one inside the restaurant, which I'm like, guys, like I this that makes me crazy. People were questioning why no one in the restaurant had done anything to try to stop him.

[Ash]

What are you going to do? He has a million guns.

[Elena]

And that's the thing. Because they're all like, well, any attempt would have been better than nothing.

[Ash]

You're gonna get killed.

[Elena]

Exactly. And Albert Leos somebody who was there, which it's like, how will we listen to the people that were experiencing it?

[Ash]

Right?

[Elena]

Because we can all sit here on our ass in our comfy safe home. Why didn't you try to bum rush him? Why didn't you try to do that? You don't know what the fuck you would do. You don't know what your flight and fight or flight is gonna do in that moment. No, you weren't in there watching kids get shot, parents trying to save their kids.

[Ash]

And like so many people don't realize that a lot of people's fight orf flight response is free.

[Elena]

Exactly. And it's not anyone's fault.

[Ash]

No, it's just what your body biology.

[Elena]

It's just the way it is. But Albert Leo said there was just no way when you have someone who's armed the way he was, it's not like in the movies where someone can jump on him. There's just no way. No, no.

[Ash]

Like semi automatic and automatic rifles.

[Elena]

Like Jim Huberty had come prepared that afternoon. He carried an Uzi semi automatic, which also an automatic or a semi automatic. You're not getting a moment between these shots.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

Like, he's able to just mow down.

[Ash]

It's like Call of Duty. Like

[Elena]

something out of a horrible, horrible action flick. Isn't it?

[Ash]

What they do, they use that in wars. Those. In wars.

[Elena]

I have no idea. Actually, I'm not even gonna try. But it's like.

[Ash]

But they use that for like mass carnage.

[Elena]

Any kind of like automatic weapon is horrifying.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Like, it just is for like, you know, but. So he was carrying an uzi semi automatic, a 9 millimeter handgun and a Remington pump action shotgun. Whenever one gun ran out of bullets, he would simply pull another out and start firing again.

[Ash]

And you also have to think he's an expert. Like, he's.

[Elena]

So he's a gun. He can reload quick. He can fix jams.

[Ash]

Because I'm sure so many people, like, would take this moment to say, or back then, like, oh, he took a minute to reload. Yeah, he probably.

[Elena]

It was probably seconds. Yeah. He's done this his whole life. It's the only thing he's been obsessed with. And no, again, no one knew how long they might have between breaks when he would stop to reload. So no one wanted to take the chance to go rush at him and start another shooting spree.

[Ash]

You could get yourself killed because also,

[Elena]

you're not even getting yourself killed. And I'm sure these people are thinking this. He's not shooting one shot at a time. It's not just going to be you going down. You standing up and rushing at him could take out everyone around you. Right. And so they're probably thinking in that scenario, like, is it worth me getting up and having him mow down a whole group of kids behind me?

[Ash]

That's the thing. There's kids everywhere in this room.

[Elena]

Yeah. This is awful. It's an awful situation. I can't imagine being in it now. Once crime scene technicians had processed the scene later, they determined that Huberty had managed to fire, like I said, hundreds of rounds in all directions. Directions. And when he wasn't blindly firing, ranting, or listening to music, he would walk through the restaurant shooting people, several of whom were already dead, just shooting them more. And when the noise became too much, he would shout at everyone, demanding that parents keep their children Quiet because they were making him anxious.

[Ash]

What? Like, how do you expect anybody to calm their child in this situation? What the dude?

[Elena]

Maria Riveria was one of those parents hiding under the tables, trying to keep her children quiet. She told them the bullets were just little pieces of ice flying out of the broken ice machine. But she didn't think that they believed her.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

She later said, he came to our table and kicked me, and I had to pretend I was dead. Oh, my God. He thought we were dead because there was a lot of blood around us. In the end, Maria's arm was grazed by a bullet, and one of her daughters was shot in the leg. But all three did survive.

[Ash]

And also in that kid, like, that is such a mom right there in that situation to come up with something even remotely comforting instead of like, this man is killing everybody around us. It's the ice machine. Like, yeah, props to that mom.

[Elena]

That's being a mom.

[Ash]

That's next level.

[Elena]

Now, after about. Are you ready? 40 minutes of terror truly is shocking. Almost an hour.

[Ash]

It's shocking that anybody made it out of death alive.

[Elena]

Yeah. Some people decided to try to make a run for the emergency exit, hoping that they could reach the door before he spotted them. Cashier Wendy Flanagan recalled the girl that was at the cash register with me, Maggie. She saw that I was not running, and she went behind me, and she was pushing me the whole way as I ran. I imagined I was running through rain. She said. I felt like I was running through rain. And I heard bing, bing, bing. Because I believe now he was shooting with the machine gun.

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Elena]

And he was shooting at us, and the bullets were ricocheting all over. And when Maggie. And then Maggie got really heavy, and she was keeping me from running, so she slipped from my arm, and I ran down the stairs into a closet. And she never came. Like, oh, Wendy, you need to think.

[Ash]

These are, like young girls working these registers.

[Elena]

Wendy managed to reach the emergency exit on her own, but when she hit the door, she discovered it had been locked by the management, who feared the employees might see steal food if they had an unmonitored exit.

[Ash]

You gotta be kidding me.

[Elena]

I hope some came out of this.

[Ash]

You gotta be kidding me.

[Elena]

So, thinking fast, Wendy turned and ran through the door that led to a small supply room at the bottom of a short flight of stairs where several others were also hiding.

[Ash]

Okay.

[Elena]

Outside the supply room, they could hear their co worker, Albert Leos, get shot five or six times, including two serious wounds in his arm and leg. Huberty only stopped shooting Lios when he ran out of ammunition and had to return to the counter where he'd left his supply. In that moment, Lios used the opportunity to drag himself to the supply room door. And then he dragged himself down the flight of stairs where the other people were hiding. Despite how seriously he was injured, he knew if he made any noise, he was going to give away their position. So he bit down on a rolled up rag and used shoelaces as tourniquets on his arms and legs. Wow. Now, having spent nearly an hour trapped in the restaurant with this absolute maniac, the remaining survivors couldn't understand why, after having shot through the windows and killing people outside on the street, the police hadn't shown up to stop him.

[Ash]

Yeah, like, where are they?

[Elena]

This must have been like, because sitting there and having this happen for so long, you're like, where are they? Yeah, like, where are the people that are supposed to save us? Like, I don't understand this. Throughout the late 1970s and early 80s, Americans had watched their local police departments become much more militarized as well, and heavily armed with military grade weapons, supposedly to prevent or stop incidents like this, something like this. And yet there they were, trapped inside with Huberty. And there was no sign of law enforcement to be seen, at least as far as they knew. Right. In reality, though, which. This is the reality, there was a heavy presence outside police presence. But their attempts to intervene kept getting hindered by several factors. For one thing, the windows were covered with a tinted film, making it difficult for anyone outside to see in.

[Ash]

Oh, man.

[Elena]

That visibility was further hampered by the fact that after Huberty fired through the windows, the double paned glass didn't shatter. It just cracked into like a spiderweb pattern, making it almost impossible to see inside. Also challenging was their physical location, although it surely wasn't planned that way. The McDonald's was all glass on three sides and Huberty could see through all of them.

[Ash]

Right.

[Elena]

So anytime one of the officers tried to get close to the building, he would see them and unleash a torrent of semi automatic gunfire at them. This not only put the responding officers at risk, but everyone else who was still pinned down outside the restaurant when the shooting started.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Eventually, the SDPD called in fire trucks to position around the perimeter to block the pedestrians. This allowed them to remove the wounded from the scene. But the trucks, like, outside the scene, but trucks took heavy damage because he was just firing into them.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And at least one fireman was shot in the process. Now, after an hour, the San Diego police SWAT team had arrived at the scene. And I was like an hour, an hour. You brought the SWAT team in after an hour.

[Ash]

The SWAT team should be called. Should have been called immediately.

[Elena]

They took up their positions with sniper Chuck Foster atop the room of the post office across the restaurant. The roof, excuse me, of the post office. He later said, I got up on top of the room along with my spotter Barry Bennett, at about 5:02pm. I was like, what? Because this all started around 4:00pm he said, Once I got up onto the post office roof, I could look down upon the McDonald's. I could see a few bodies lying inside the restaurant. I could see a few times when the shooter was firing out towards the street, towards the fire trucks. The shooter within the McDonald's had a lot of advantages where he was at.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

As soon as he was in position on the roof, Foster had the same problems that the officer on the ground had. The windows were both tinted heavily cracked. He just couldn't see anything. Under those conditions, there was a high likelihood that if he took a shot, Foster could have missed or hit one of the people inside. Yeah. Also, the officers outside the restaurant knew very little about what was actually happening inside the restaurant. And they thought that if there was more than one shooter, which they thought there was, considering how many shots were being fired, they said taking one out might prompt the other one to kill everyone else inside.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Because they also didn't know if this was like a hostage situation. And they were like, if we kill one, that might negate any hope that we have of getting anyone else out.

[Ash]

Right. This is an impossible situation.

[Elena]

It is now. After about 15 more minutes of holding in position, Chuck Foster finally saw Huberty walk to the front of the restaurant and hop up on the counter. From his position, it looked like Jim was reloading his guns. But Foster could only see him from the waist down and didn't have a clear shot. He later said it was impossible to see inside the McDonald's through those windows. I didn't get a chance to see him at all until just before shooting him.

[Ash]

Wow.

[Elena]

The only reason I could see inside was because his gunshots shattered a double door of safety glass. Chuck saw Huberty get off the counter and take a few steps towards the front doors, which had been blown out entirely. Worried that he might not get another chance, he drew in a deep breath. And as soon as Jim appeared through the broken glass of the front door, he fired a single shot that ripped right through Huberty's heart, killing him instantly.

[Ash]

Wow.

[Elena]

At 5:17pm After a full 77 minutes of carnage and complete terror, the massacre inside The San Ysidro McDonald's had finally come to an end.

[Ash]

77 minutes.

[Elena]

77 minutes.

[Ash]

That has to be one of the longest shootings.

[Elena]

I can't imagine this. In that time, Jim huberty had murdered 21 people, many of them children, and injured nearly two dozen others. And those who managed to survive this whole thing, having escaped with their lives, would suffer from profound post traumatic stress disorder.

[Ash]

Absolutely. For decades, probably for the rest of their lives.

[Elena]

Oh, I can't even imagine.

[Ash]

And also, there are children suffering PTSD

[Elena]

from this, like, who are gonna have to grow up with this. Like, truly.

[Ash]

That's why, like, this time of year, when I think about, like, fireworks and that kind of thing and just. Yeah, obviously, like, it's a thing that happens, but I just feel for people who are triggered by that, because that has got to send you into such a catastrophic state.

[Elena]

That sound. Yeah, yeah.

[Ash]

Like, that's. I can't imagine surviving this and then hearing.

[Elena]

And then hearing fireworks. Especially when, like, I think it's so annoying. And I don't care how I come.

[Ash]

I feel. I know exactly what you're gonna say. And I feel the same.

[Elena]

For the 4th of July. Cut the shit.

[Ash]

All done.

[Elena]

Cut the shit. Because when people start doing them on random weeknights at like, 11pm, you're an asshole. You're an asshole. And that's just how I feel. Like, literally care. I'm like that. I just think you're an asshole if you do that. Like, truly. And especially when people start it weeks earlier or they do it for weeks after the 4th of July, there's a designated day.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And you do. I realize the world is not, like, fully, you know, a safe space for everyone and can't cater to everyone's, you know, triggers or whatever the hell anybody wants to say, but there are certain things we can do that are just really easy to do. Yeah. And it's like, do your fireworks on the 4th of July.

[Ash]

Come on.

[Elena]

And honestly, you just don't need to do them.

[Ash]

Think about this this year. Like, just think about. Really?

[Elena]

This year. Yeah, just think about this. And thinking about somebody who lived through this. And then two weeks after 4th of July, someone decides to, out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, shoot off fireworks a couple of houses down. Not only, like, and what that would

[Ash]

do to someone, because also, you have to think of how many people at this point in life and where we are have lived through this, this.

[Elena]

So way more people have Lived through this.

[Ash]

And, like, you really do need to take that into consideration.

[Elena]

Consideration. Yeah. Which I feel like it's worth.

[Ash]

It's worth saying.

[Elena]

I feel like a lot of our listeners are just.

[Ash]

I know. I'm sure we pissed off a couple people.

[Elena]

I'm sure we got a couple people that are pissed off, but it's really worth saying it's just the way it is. But I think most of our listeners right now, I think you guys listening are the kind of people that are considerate and think of those things and also don't do that stuff. I'm sure, you know, you're always going to get people. But just if you are one of those people that loves to shoot off fireworks a few weeks after the 4th of July, just think about this.

[Ash]

Yeah. Think. Take a second guess.

[Elena]

If you decide to do it anyway, that's. That's on you. But, like, think of doing anyway. That kind of sucks. And, like, I feel like we're not

[Ash]

as close as I thought we were,

[Elena]

but, like, let's be friends and just. Yeah. All agree not to do that. Yeah. Now, once Huberty was dead, the survivors came running out of the building in all directions, not towards police or any other members of law enforcement, just away from the fucking building as fast as they could. It was only after they'd managed to wrangle the survivors and get the wounded to the hospital that the STBD finally started to understand the scope of what happened here. Because, remember, they still don't know what the fuck was going on.

[Ash]

They're like, is there still a hostage?

[Elena]

Miguel Rosario recalled, Nobody knew that this guy was in there by himself and just arbitrarily shooting people, because why would your mind even think that? Well, and especially at this time.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

It wasn't from outside the restaurant. All they knew was that someone was shooting inside. So they naturally thought it was a robbery or a hostage situation. And that was really the most shocking element of the story. Although they've become obviously, tragically common now, which is horrific and shame on all of us for it. In 1984, mass shootings were exceedingly rare. So much so, in fact, that law enforcement didn't recognize it when it happened in San Ysidro. Jim Huberty hadn't gone to McDonald's to rob anyone or make some kind of political statement, even by taking hostages. He'd gone there for the sole purpose of killing as many people as humanly possible before being taken out by the police. And he did exactly that.

[Ash]

He sure did.

[Elena]

Police officers and crime scene technicians worked through the night to process the scene and identify the bodies. According to the coroner, 13 of the victims died immediately upon being shot, while the rest likely died within a few minutes of being struck down. Because so many of the victims were children and didn't have identification on them, staff members from the coroner's office were forced to use photographs of the victims from the shoulders up to show the mass of people who'd assembled outside the office looking for their loved ones. By the following day, they'd managed to identify all of the victims. I'm going to read them out. Elsa Herlinda borboa Fierro was 19. Neva Denise Cain was 22. Michelle Deanne Carncross was 18. Maria Elena Colmanero Silva was 19. Gloria Lopez Gonzalez, 22. Blythe Reagan Herrera, 31. Mateo Herrera, 11. Pauline Aquino Lopez, 21. Margarita Padilla, 18. Claudia Perez, 9.

[Ash]

9.

[Elena]

Ada Velasquez Victoria was 69. Jose Ruben Lozano Perez was 19. Carlos Reyes was 8 months.

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Elena]

Jacqueline Wright Reyes was 18. Victor Maximilian Rivera was 25. Aris Delzy Vuelvas Vargas was 31. Hugo Luis Velazquez. Excuse me. Was 45. Lawrence Herman Versluze was 62. David Flores Delgado was 11. Omar Alonzo Hernandez was 11. And Miguel Victoria Yoa was 74 years old.

[Ash]

Such, like a vast range of ages there.

[Elena]

Like people eight months to 74.

[Ash]

Eight months. Like literally just starting your time on this earth and like 69 and 74 and you make it that long in your life and this is the one that ends your life. Yeah, like, that's just so cruel.

[Elena]

And to be looking at people crying and begging for their lives and just indiscriminately shoot them. Seeing parents trying to shield their crying children and shoot them anyways. You're shooting babies, you're doing Nothing.

[Ash]

You're shooting 11 and 12 year olds, you're shooting parents.

[Elena]

Jim Huberty had nothing inside of him.

[Ash]

He was an empty vessel, like, truly an empty vessel.

[Elena]

Like, he was just nothing would have made him stop. It really wouldn't. When the news broke, it shocked everyone from one end of the country to the other, although it has unfortunately been surpassed in number by others since. At the time, the San Ysidro massacre was the worst mass shooting in American history. And most people found it impossible to understand how such a thing could happen. Which I wish we could say now that that's the same thing that happens now that everyone can't imagine this happening. However, those who knew Jim Huberty weren't nearly as surprised A former neighbor told a reporter, he came across to me as cold. He looked like your average guy, except for his facial expressions. I never saw a smile on him. Now, another person who wasn't entirely surprised by the shooting was Jim's wife, Edna.

[Ash]

I wonder if they, like, heard it from their apartment.

[Elena]

That's what I wonder.

[Ash]

They had to have.

[Elena]

Yeah. But while being very well aware of Jim's long struggle with his poor mental health, his inability to manage his rage, and the full extent of his decomposition in the day before the accident, Aetna would go on to unsuccessfully sue the McDonald's corporation a few years later.

[Ash]

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

[Elena]

Alleging that her deceased husband had been consuming copious amounts of McDonald's chicken nuggets in the days, weeks and months leading up to the shooting.

[Ash]

To blame this atrocity on chicken nuggets, on over consumption of chicken nuggets when, you know, is diabolical.

[Elena]

And especially, you know who that man was. You know? Right well, who that man was always

[Ash]

in that way, copious amounts of chicken nuggets or not.

[Elena]

Yeah, that's all.

[Ash]

That's all I'm gonna say.

[Elena]

We've already given you, like, how we feel about, like, Edna not leaving or whatever. Like, we've said, we've sympathized. We've sympathized with. And I will continue to sympathize and empathize with her.

[Ash]

Not on this.

[Elena]

On this. No. No, babe. I'm not empathizing with you. You're not blaming it on chicken nuggets. You're gonna have to excuse me on this one. I'm not empathizing with the chicken nuggets.

[Ash]

I can't imagine being a surviving victim or the victim of the family member of a victim and hearing that this woman blamed it on chicken nuggets, saying

[Elena]

the chicken nuggets made him do this.

[Ash]

No, you have to be kidding me.

[Elena]

She said that it contributed to his disordered mind.

[Ash]

It didn't.

[Elena]

He was already there. He had already said a million times to a million different people that he was going to kill a lot.

[Ash]

He had been that way from childhood,

[Elena]

and that is no fault of hers. But don't blame it on chicken nuggets.

[Ash]

That's wild.

[Elena]

Because that really trivializes it.

[Ash]

It really does.

[Elena]

And it makes it not his fault. Suddenly.

[Ash]

Yep.

[Elena]

And that's wild to do.

[Ash]

It absolutely is.

[Elena]

Now, while most people wondered what had caused him to go on such a shocking rampage, the public was equally frustrated with local law enforcement. And everyone wanted to know why and how he Was able to continue killing people for well over an hour before police intervened. That was a long time.

[Ash]

77 minutes.

[Elena]

And for them to only get SWAT there, like, an hour late, that's that. I don't get. I don't either. I'll never understand that. To throw a sniper on a roof an hour later.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

What are you doing? Like, what are you doing?

[Ash]

He could have been stopped earlier.

[Elena]

In truth, it seems there were several important factors that obviously definitely hindered them from getting to him sooner. But the initial error in dispatching in the presence of a single officer to the heavy tinting on the glass, to the spidering on the glass, all these things contributed to this allowing being allowed to go on for far too long. But still, the event did go on to influence police procedure with regards to incidents of mass shootings and other acts of terrorism, changing everything from the language used in communication between agencies, because no one labeled this a mass shooting at first, to the surveillance tools used, and even the scale and scope of weapons carried by all officers. Now, in the wake of the massacre, the community struggled over what to do with the building. I know some wanted it torn down completely, while others thought it should remain. In the end, the building was demolished and a permanent memorial was installed in 1990. I think this was the best thing to do.

[Ash]

I think that's what I would have preferred, too.

[Elena]

The memorial consists of 21 hexagonal white marble pillars, each bearing the name of a victim. In his statement to the press at the unveiling of the memorial, designer Roberto Valdez said the 21 hexagons represent each person that died. And they are different heights representing the variety of ages and races of the people involved in the massacre. They are bonded together in the hopes that the community in a tragedy like this will stick together like they did. Wow.

[Ash]

That's really beautiful. That gave me chills.

[Elena]

Yeah. I think that was the best thing they could have done for that location. And what that was.

[Ash]

I mean, what can you do other than that? Yeah.

[Elena]

It's a horrific story. It is. But again, I think it's one that needs to be told. One, to make sure those people are remembered.

[Ash]

Yep.

[Elena]

And two, to really hammer in that mental health care and treatment for mental health is. We can't ever get too good with it, man.

[Ash]

And we're nowhere near it. We need to keep improving.

[Elena]

We're nowhere near it. So it's like, we need to keep improving. And also, people need to say. When people are saying stuff, I know it's hard sometimes. Of course, I realize that people are like, I don't want to sound like a crazy person calling and say this. I don't want to get. When he's life ruined. I don't want to do this.

[Ash]

Like, people are saying the things that Jim Huberty was saying. There's no such thing as overreacting to somebody's life.

[Elena]

Just anonymously say, hey, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't know if he was serious, but he said this really concerning thing.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

You could be saving a lot of people.

[Ash]

You absolutely could.

[Elena]

If you ever get a chance to. Please do that.

[Ash]

Please do, honestly. All right.

[Elena]

We need a fun. We need the funnest effects.

[Ash]

I'm really looking for a good one. Wow. This one. I don't know if I would call it fun, but it's something. People once used corn cobs instead of toilet paper because they were soft, easy to hold. And there were a lot of them.

[Elena]

I love the fact there were a lot of them.

[Ash]

There were a lot of them.

[Elena]

There was so much corn, you could use it to wipe your butt.

[Ash]

It has the juice. I have to go now.

[Elena]

That's crazy.

[Ash]

I have to go now.

[Elena]

That is a pretty fun fact.

[Ash]

I have never heard that in my life, and I'm not quite sure if I'm better for it.

[Elena]

I feel like we're all better for it, to be honest.

[Ash]

That's a crazy one.

[Elena]

I think we are. All right, guys.

[Ash]

Be kind to each other.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Think about fireworks this year.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And if somebody says something to you that is so dark and chilling that it rots you to your core, tell someone.

[Elena]

That's a great way of explaining.

[Ash]

And we hope you keep listening.

[Elena]

We hope you keep it weird, but

[Ash]

not so weird that you get rotted to your core and you don't.

[Elena]

Don't say anything. Yeah. Bye. Bye.

[Ash]

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[Elena]

Here's the thing. If you get smart with your money,

[Ash]

you can do things like that. With empower, you can start making the most out of your money. So you can go out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard to have some fun with our money?

[Elena]

So use Empower and get good at

[Ash]

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[Elena]

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[Ash]

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