On July 18, 1984, an unemployed security guard armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol opened fire inside a crowded McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, killing 21 people before being shot dead by police.
From the Tribune, Thursday, July 19, 1984:
Those grazed by death here recall ordeal
By Bill Callahan and Frank Saldana, Tribune Staff Writers
Maria Enelda Diaz and her 2-year-old son were entering the McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro when a man wearing a dark T-shirt and combat fatigues shoved his way between them.
Her initial shock over the man’s rudeness instantly turned to terror as the man grabbed a rifle slung over his shoulder and began spraying bullets into customers in the packed restaurant.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I didn’t know what to think. My baby started crying.”
Diaz stumbled back outside the door and then noticed to her horror that her boy was still in the restaurant a few steps away and in mortal danger.
“He looked at me and I motioned to him to come to me,” she said. “He pushed the door open. I grabbed him and we somehow escaped.
“I thought he would kill us all, but God was with us.”
Diaz, a Tijuana woman visiting San Ysidro, was among those caught in yesterday’s bloodbath when a crazed gunman with a small arsenal of weapons opened fire on unsuspecting men, women and children in a massacre that ended with the gunman and 20 others dead.
The dead are victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But Diaz and dozens of other innocent people who came under the man’s fire are thanking God, good luck or the efforts of courageous citizens who came to their aid for being alive today.
* * *
Joshua Coleman, 11, of Chula Vista, and his two friends had pedaled their bicycles to a nearby doughnut shop. Thirsty in the muggy heat, they decided to ride over to McDonald’s and quench their thirsts with some soft drinks.
When they approached the restaurant, Joshua heard a man shout something to him. As he turned, shots rang out and the boy was struck by what he thought were flying shards of glass.
Joshua later told his mother, Debbie Coleman, that he lay motionless while the gunman rained bullets over his body from inside the restaurant.
“He played dead, and that probably saved his life,” she said.
“He was very uncomfortable but he talked to himself, sang to himself.”
Pinned down by the gunfire, police could only come to Joshua’s aid after the gunman was killed.
While Joshua lay there he could see his friends, bleeding, on the pavement next to him.
From his bed in Chula Vista Community Hospital, where he is in stable condition with pellet wounds, Joshua questioned his mother about his pals.
“He’s constantly asking about them,” she said.
Joshua learned today that his two friends — David Flores and Omarr Hernandez, both 11 and from San Ysidro — were killed.
* * *
Police officer Steve Pelligrino was stopped by a frantic woman clutching an injured baby whose head and body wounds had stained its diapers red.
The woman, who could not speak English very well, appealed to Pelligrino for help, adding that the tot was not hers.
Pelligrino placed the child next to him in his car and drove with one hand while he pressed on the baby’s body wound with his other hand in an effort to stop the bleeding.
The three raced to Chula Vista Community Hospital, where the baby was treated and then transferred to Children’s Hospital. English-speaking relatives said the baby is Karlilta Flores. Children’s Hospital officials said she was in critical condition today with multiple gunshot wounds.
Pelligrino, meanwhile, was thankful that he was able to help save a life. “I feel good about it,” said the officer. He has been on the force for two years.
* * *
Alice Perec feared the worst when she heard the volleys of gunshots from the McDonald’s near her San Ysidro home. Her two children and their baby-sitter had planned to go to a bank and a supermarket on a route that would have taken them by the restaurant.
Barred behind a police barricade at West Park Avenue a few blocks from the bloody scene, Perec learned to her relief that the three had made a detour to the local Post Office and were safe.
“Thank God, thank God,” she said, holding her shaking head.
One of her daughters, Salina Xylina, 11, told her mother of their close call.
“As soon as we went in (the Post Office) we heard shots,” she said. “Then they told us to get down. It was scary … we just prayed to God that we would be saved.”
She said a man who ignored the order to take cover was less fortunate. He was pulled back into the office minutes later with wounds in his stomach, head and an arm, she said.
* * *
Francisco Lopez also tried to ignore orders, but his actions were understandable. His son, 22, with the same name, is an assistant manager at the McDonald’s in San Ysidro.
The senior Lopez was at work at his general contracting business when he heard radio reports of shooting at the restaurant.
He rushed to the area and attempted to push his way past the police barricade but was wrestled back behind the lines by officers concerned about the safety of onlookers.
The anxious father then paced nervously back and forth, occasionally throwing his hands skyward in frustration.
He was to learn later that his son had escaped and was treated at Chula Vista Community Hospital for minor injuries and released.
* * *
Gilbert Silvas, 18, and his friend Anthony Palafox, 17, both seniors at Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach, had stopped at the San Ysidro McDonald’s shortly before 4 p.m.
They went home — a few blocks away — for a late-afternoon meal but quickly returned to the restaurant. Fortunately for them, they didn’t return too quickly.
“We bought a bunch of hamburgers, six of them, and we noticed only five were in the bag, so we were going back,” said Silvas.
They returned to chaos.
“We saw people running scared, officers with shotguns, police underneath their cars and helicopters,” said Silvas.
“We heard shooting, then we wouldn’t hear anything,” said Palafox. “Then people would start coming back out again. Then there would be shooting again and people would duck. It was weird.”
