Original subtitles

Every time I would wake up and scream because I thought I was living

the same thing. It was many years living the same thing, seeing everything I

looked at, and going through and feeling.

I would wake up wet, sweating, crying.

As if it had just been yesterday, and still.

As if it had just never happened.

Me dañó mucho.

Bastante.

Me destrozó mi vida.

Que miré muchas cosas.

Miré a muchas familias. Miré cómo quedaron sus posiciones muertas.

Hombres, mujeres, niños.

Muchos muertos miré y muchas víctimas.

When I looked around, it was a mess. It was very bloody in there.

There were people laying all over the place.

The first group of people that I encountered looked like a family.

Three people, a family. Mom and dad and an infant.

One of the parents was face down, the other parent was face up, and the infant

was... right wedged in right between them they were obviously dead some

people online were down the suspect was down as i turned to look at

the main dining area there were bodies all over the place and about that time a

lieutenant came in and started having people exit the restaurant which at that

time i i it was great because

I needed to get out of there and I did

Do

you

remember that job like it was yesterday?

Yes I worked in the back supplies and storage and as a cook as well. Different

roles and responsibilities depending on what time of the day it is.

So I was just learning the job, first job I ever had pretty much.

So you almost didn't show up for work that day?

Correct. I wasn't going to go in. My friends were going to the beach that day

in the summertime and they invited me to go with them.

And I woke up and I'm like, I kept fighting it. Should I go? Should I not

go? And something kept telling me not to go into work, but I didn't want to.

I wasn't brought up that way where you just call in sick and lie.

How long were you an employee there before this happened?

Three months.

Was it a very busy McDonald's?

Yeah, very busy.

A lot of children, because there's a lot of children in that community, and

they'd all come to play in our playground and not really eat, but they

occupied the playground area.

This is the Avril Villas apartment complex.

It has since been renamed.

This is exactly where the shooter lived. You saw his apartment, number nine.

I'm about to show you now how close he lived to that McDonald's where he

changed many, many lives.

Okay, we're leaving the apartment complex now of where the shooter lived

and going to drive to the site of the tragedy.

I'm going to say it's maybe 200 feet.

Half a block.

This is how close the shooter lived to the McDonald's.

As a matter of fact, the Yum Yum Donuts is still there, and the post office is

still here as well.

And we're already here. This is how long it took him to go from his apartment

complex to the McDonald's.

When the killer walks in...

Did you see him walk in? Where were you exactly in the restaurant?

I did not see him walk in. The first idea I had of

anything going on is he fired the first shot.

Everything happened so fast, so I really don't know exactly what happened, but I

know that the one girl, she got shot and I saw the body.

fly, and then I knew, like, everybody started screaming and, yeah, running,

screaming.

Who was that, one girl?

Um, the manager, Neva.

Did you see him firing at people? Yes, I did. I saw him coming in, I saw him tell

everybody to get to the floor, and then he started.

shooting at everyone.

People that tried to get up and tried to run out of the McDonald's, he started

shooting at them.

We were sitting in the back of the restaurant.

kind of by the play area.

We got under the table.

I had gotten shot, but I hadn't realized I had been shot in both arms.

I didn't really feel it.

Just the heat, that's all I felt, the heat from the bullets.

The call came out originally, as I can remember, some type of disturbance where

a little girl had been shot.

I had no clue what I was about to enter into.

I could only imagine maybe she got in the middle of some type of disturbance

and was shot.

Whether it was accidentally or on purpose, I had no clue.

Did the police go to the wrong McDonald's in the very beginning?

What happened was there's two McDonald's, one on the west side, one on

the east side.

Originally, when the call came in, I was dispatched to the McDonald's on the east

side.

About a block away, I was called again, and that was corrected.

And that cost the department about how much time?

Probably a couple minutes, two,

three, four minutes at most.

I heard the french fry machine kept going off because somebody had put

french fries and then we weren't there to take it when the timer went off. So I

know that all the alarms started going off right away.

I couldn't really make out a lot of the things he said, but he had a radio. At

first I thought maybe he's trying to hear himself, like if they're reporting

on him or whatever, but he would play music.

He wasn't trying to find people talking. He would play music.

I just remember seeing the shooter's legs and boots when I was under the

table.

Ron was kind of blocking my... I was on the inside, he was on the outside of the

booth.

And at one point I got shot.

And he just kept asking me not to move.

I didn't really realize what was going on. At the time, I kind of did.

The fact is that he saved my life, and he took seven shots for me.

And had he not done that, I probably wouldn't be here today.

Me and my two friends, Omar and David, went to Yum Yum Donuts to have some

donuts.

We think we wanted Sundays or something, so we pushed our bikes across the

parking lot to McDonald's.

And somebody across the street called us, and he was probably trying to warn

us, I guess. I don't know. He couldn't really hear him. So I turned partially

around and got hit on my right side. My friend Omar turned all the way around

and got shot in the back. And then David never turned around. He got shot in the

chest.

So we all went down, and there's blood squirting out of my arm. I didn't know

what happened.

You know, it's the last thing you think of. You've been shot, you know. So I was

dropped to my knees, and he kept shooting at me. He kept shooting the car

windows out next to me, and my lungs started to collapse, and I couldn't

breathe. It's like I was suffocating.

This was not television. This was the real thing happening right in front of

me, and I was capturing it all with my eyes and my emotions and trying to make

sense of what was going on, trying to figure out how in the world was I going

to cover this. Before I could even realize it, I heard the whistles of the

gunshots past my head, and I hit the ground. In fact, I hit the ground so

hard I thought I'd been shot because when I came up, I had blood on my face

and on my hands, and I actually hit my nose on the pavement.

I told my husband to get to San Isidro faster, to go to San Diego.

We got there, and I told him, let's eat tacos, and he said, no, let's go to

McDonald's.

We got to McDonald's, he parked near the post office, I

grabbed my daughter, we walked a little like this, in the middle of the...

McDonald's and the car.

It was when I started to feel the shot.

Like a bomb.

I felt something like a bomb.

At that moment I felt blood.

I crouched down and looked at my daughter. But I didn't let her go. I

hugged her and crouched down and looked at my daughter bleeding.

So I started to scream, my eye, my eye.

When we looked...

I felt that they shot us again.

My husband said to me, give me the girl.

And I gave her to him.

So he said to me, run.

But he ran to the side of the post office and I to the left side.

And I looked at myself, I had a lot of blood in my stomach, in my

leg, in my arm.

When I arrived, I parked on one of the driveways of the post office right next

to the mcdonald's the last information updated information i received was that

the little girl was being carried into the post office that's where my focus

was i had no idea about the mcdonald's so it was a girl i i never saw the girl

never met the girl walking to the post office is when i first noticed something

was wrong people were hiding behind cars and they were looking toward the

mcdonald's And I was right in the middle of the lot, and I looked over.

I lucked out. I really lucked out, because when I looked over, the suspect

was just coming out of the side door by the drive-thru.

And that's the first time I saw him.

And what got my attention was he had the long-barrel Uzi held across his chest

like this. And he spotted me and shot at me.

I would have been justified in shooting back, but I was completely outgunned. I

had a .38 caliber handgun. The best I could do was to take cover.

I got behind a truck.

He did his best to shoot through the truck, around the truck, over the truck.

Are you scared at all? Yeah, I was scared, but I wasn't scared panicky.

I could feel the urgency and I could feel the danger, but my mind was working

because, you know, I had a job to do.

And I think I even thought about feeling a little bit sad

because my mom was going to find out that I was killed.

As fast as that thought came in, it was gone, and I was thinking what I had to

do.

Was there any point during the shooting that someone could have grabbed him?

No, I wanted to do that, but there's just no way.

When you have someone that's armed the way he was.

There's just no way.

It's not like in the movies where you're fast enough, you can jump or whatnot.

There's just no way.

I would take peeks, and I would look up, and I would see him go up to people and

shoot them.

And then I would duck down because, again, not only was he firing at the

people, but he kept shooting all inside the building.

Again, it's all made out of stainless steel.

So when he was firing, I'd look up, and I'd see what he was doing, and then I'd

duck down because the bullets were ricocheting, and I just didn't want to

get hit by a bullet.

And you'd go and reload, right?

He'd wait a few minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, and then he'd go back up to

people and start shooting them some more. And some people that were laying

there, I don't know if they were plain dead or if they were dead already, but

he'd go up to people that weren't moving at all and shooting them some more.

The shooter said that if they kept quiet, he wouldn't harm them.

that they please shut them up because he was getting sick and he didn't want to

kill children.

But the children didn't stop crying and he started shooting, and it was table by

table, and he shot and killed many children.

But when he started doing that, I prayed to God that he would take care of me and

protect me, that he would help me save my children, and if not, that he would

take me with him soon.

I'm just trying to stay alive at that point. I'm just thinking about breathing

because it was tough to breathe. That's all I remember. I needed air and I

couldn't get enough.

Decided to take short, quick breaths.

But that's all I can think of at the time is I didn't want to die, you know.

David, when he got shot, he was pretty much done right away.

Omar was crying for his mom. I remember him screaming for his mom.

It's something you don't forget when you see life leave the body because they go

into these convulsions and like hovering across the ground. It's kind of crazy.

Omar was vomiting?

Yeah, Omar was vomiting. David died right away. Omar took him a few minutes.

And then he did his little death rolls and then he started vomiting.

And then he was still. That was it. I knew it was over.

I saw the elderly lady go to open the door, and he shot her, and then I

think he, I don't know where he shot her. I was laying down, I was looking

down the walkway, and she went down, and then her husband came over and was

kneeling over her body, and he looked up, and then he shot him.

When you first got to the scene, tell me what you saw.

A madhouse, quite frankly. I don't think anybody had fully realized exactly what

they had on their hands.

They saw dead children.

And that should have told them right there or down there.

They had a real problem.

You wanted to tell yourself that you weren't seeing what you were seeing.

I keep going back to what I initially saw, which is a dead child laying on his

bicycle.

I see him to this day.

It's Omar?

Yeah.

It was pretty easy to tell, even from a little distance, that he was dead.

My mission was, in my mind, was to get into a tactical position.

to prevent the suspect or the suspects from escaping.

I ended up in a prone position behind a palm tree, pretty thick palm tree, and

at one point he came, still inside the restaurant, came by one of the doors,

one of the side doors by the drive-thru, and I could see him through the window.

I had him in my sights for a couple seconds.

The shot was not taken because at that point I didn't know whether...

There were more than one, whether this was a hostage type of situation.

Officer Mike Rosario was first on scene.

Apparently he had a shot. Should he have taken that shot?

I can understand why he wouldn't want to take the shot.

McDonald's windows are reasonably thick.

Right, but a bullet's a bullet, don't you think?

Who knows whether it's going to deflect it and only wound him and make him even

madder or miss him completely.

But does he have the authority to take that shot?

I would think so, yeah.

So you think he should have taken that shot?

He could have tried it, but it might not have worked.

You really had to think about what makes sense here.

It didn't make sense to me that this guy would be alone.

I shoot him, and his buddies start executing people.

In retrospect, would you have taken that shot?

You know, I thought about that.

And I remember coming to the conclusion in my mind that without the information

that I had at the moment, I made the right call.

I'm very comfortable with that.

No guilt there, no living within?

No guilt. What could have been, should have been? No guilt, because you can't.

I mean, you could. You want to beat yourself up over that, and you can.

I think that's one of the reasons I've been able to move on with my life

without being traumatized in my mind is because I didn't allow myself

to go there and to second-guess myself.

And I'm good with that.

When I was in there, I was wondering, where are the police? Where are the

police? It just kept going on and on. And I know that's not OK, that he's

still shooting. And it's been ongoing, ongoing.

He's killing more people.

And the police aren't coming in. Shoot him.

Shoot him.

And we thought they weren't there.

We were like, we could hear the sirens and stuff coming.

Nobody came in like nobody stopped him. He just kept shooting and shooting

people screaming and Then it got quiet and he just kept shooting and I was

like, what is he shooting at now?

I counted about 125 bullets before I lost count so he fired a lot of rounds

inside that place It was very loud. A lot of the rounds were ricocheting off

the stainless steel when he was close by reloading. I could hear the clicking of

the magazines, but other than that, you know, I had ringing in my ears from the

bullets and, you know, from the muzzle fire.

And I grabbed her, and at two o'clock I raised my head.

He went and kicked me. I had to pretend to be dead so that he wouldn't kill

me. So he thought that he had killed me too, because there was a lot of blood

around me, and he scratched my arm, and my eldest daughter had bullets in her

leg.

And that's why, thank God, he protected us.

We're just trying to keep calm and quiet so he didn't hear us while we were

hiding and hunching down in between a couple of aisles.

And then eventually he heard us.

Like you guys were talking?

No, just the females that were with me were crying and we were trying to keep

them quiet because they were very scared.

And I think eventually he heard us. I'd say about maybe 35 to 40 minutes later,

it's when he found us hiding hunched down in between a couple of aisles.

And he just started shooting us right away.

I remember Maggie pushing me, telling me, run, run. She grabbed my arm.

I never looked at her. I just shook my arm down and kept running, and I got out

of the way of the bullets, and she did it. She

stayed there.

Where did you go next?

I went in the closet.

You went to the closet.

I ran to go out the emergency exit, but that was locked.

That's a tough break.

Yeah. So everyone that was in the closet with me had the same idea. We all ran

for the emergency exit. We weren't trying to go in the closet.

Why was that door locked?

They were afraid we were going to steal food.

And how many people hid in there?

Um, six.

Wow.

Yeah.

And a baby.

So then he shoots you five times. Yes.

And I guess he thought you were dead. That's why he didn't... No, he ended up

running out of ammunition after he killed my coworkers. And he shot me. He

ran out of ammunition on me. And he went to the front to reload.

And when he went back to the front to reload, I tried to get up to get out of

there. And I fell on my face because I was shot in my leg and I couldn't walk.

So I ended up crawling out of the main floor and downstairs into a closet.

How did you do that despite being injured?

Just the will to get out of there, to try to stay alive.

That's amazing.

I don't know what else to say.

Good for you. If that's not guts, let's get rid of that word.

I understand you were a great football player. Did that athleticism help you? I

don't know. You know, when you're under such stress and you just want to live

and survive, you can do whatever it takes.

And I wasn't really thinking. I was just wanting to leave and get out of that

area because I knew that he was going to come back to finish me off.

I never looked back.

I just crawled and crawled and crawled and just hoping that he didn't see me

and hear me as I, you know, made my way downstairs into the closet.

He came.

Well, we were locked in there, and we could only hear. We didn't know who it

was. And he slid against the door.

He said, please let me in.

And then we said, it's Albert.

And then they opened the door, and they drug him in.

And then he fell, like, amongst us, because there was no room in there. And

he collapsed, like, at first, but he was in so much pain.

and shot all over the place.

It was just horrible, and he couldn't make any sounds.

He couldn't even cry because that would jeopardize our safety.

When I was down in the closet, I took the shoelaces off my...

my shoes and i used one on my right leg to stop control the bleeding as a

tourniquet and my left arm because it was bleeding heavily and then i grabbed

a cloth and i bet on it now during this whole time are you wondering where in

the world is the police yes i am

i arrived

at

The shopping center adjacent to the McDonald's at I believe about 440 p.m..

I got up on top of the roof along with my spotter Barry Bennett at about

502 p.m.. Once I got up on to 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 Sometimes when the shooter was

firing out towards the street and towards the fire trucks, see the

ricochets of the rounds.

The shooter within the McDonald's had a lot of advantages where he was at. He

had a clear feel of the fire outside because of the parking lots.

Other officers told me that as they tried to advance over to the McDonald's

to give aid to the kids that were shot outside the door, They were driven back

by gunfire. There was no cover for them to protect themselves.

The windows of the McDonald's were tinted and

I believe was laminated glass.

There were bullet holes through the glass, but the glass did not shatter. 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.

The only reason I could see inside was that his gunshots shattered a double

door of safety glass.

He was sitting on the counter where you would order food, had his legs dangling

off of it. I could see him basically from the thigh down.

He appeared to be reloading one of his magazines.

I waited until he hopped off the counter, and then he walked towards the

door with the broken glass and then stopped to where the top of the door

frame covered his head and neck, but I had a clear view of his chest and torso.

So then I shot him through the heart.

Everybody was glad it was apparently over, but bear in mind that nobody

yet had realized the full scene.

Nobody knew how many people were dead inside that restaurant.

Nobody knew there was an infant shot to death.

Apparently, when I got there, the shot, I believe, had already been fired that

had...

knocked down the suspect.

I just saw a lot of chaos going on, people everywhere, you know, trying to

watch as he was going on. All the police officers were still trying to contain

the scene, set up traffic posts.

Not nearly

the amount of carnage was suspected that... Ultimately was found if people

were saying you know there's a couple people shot or something a couple people

outside because they were getting from different vantage points

As

the people started

coming out it became chaos because people didn't want to come to the police

They were looking for their loved ones, even if they were wounded. They were

trying to get to people that they knew.

Information is of the utmost at that time. I mean, you don't know if you had

another suspect that took off or, you know, was no longer in, could have come

out with the hostages, could be one of the hostages.

He opened up all through the house, all around here. There were bullets

ricocheting all over the place.

I didn't get a chance to see him, but it was scary.

Real scary.

He was just shooting at anything.

It was just so much gunfire.

It's terrible.

Were you scared?

Really scared?

I was scared, but at the same time, I was more scared at the people inside.

One of the first persons to come out was Guadalupe.

And I noticed that she had some blood on her dress.

And at that point, I asked her if she was okay.

And she said, yes. I said, are you sure?

She says, yes. She did not realize she had been shot at that time. She saw the

blood, but she didn't think it was hers. And I didn't want to have her panic, so

I walked over to the ambulance and they treated her from there.

Yo no me acuerdo de lo del video que mi mamá me llevaba corriendo. No me acuerdo

de eso.

Me acuerdo ya después adentro del correo que yo me acuerdo que había paredes con

cajitas. No sabía qué eran. Eran los P.O. Boxes.

Y todo embarrado de sangre, los heridos tirados ahí, gritando.

Y ahí fue cuando yo ya me asusté en verdad porque...

In the end an alarm went off and that's why we couldn't hear when the police

came into the building.

We didn't know and then we heard someone at the closet and they were yelling

something.

and they threw the closet door open, and they put all their guns on us, and they

were trying to figure out who we were, because they didn't know we were in

there. I guess they were telling us, like, that they were in there and to

come out if you need help or whatever. We didn't hear any of that.

He was just kind of hunched up, and I just grabbed his leg and tried to wake

him up. I thought he was asleep like I was.

I don't think he really registered.

that he was dead.

I don't think I really realized that.

I was in a lot of shock, so I don't think I realized that until later.

I didn't know where my daughter was because we were taken to three different

hospitals. One for me, one for the girl.

I didn't know if she was alive, if she was dead, if she had survived.

I didn't know anything.

Somebody ran up to my car and said, the baby's been shot.

And so what I did was I placed the woman in the car with me. And she didn't speak

any English. She kept saying, it's not my baby.

I said, it's OK. And so she was holding the head wound, and I was holding the

back wound or some other wound that was on the back of the baby.

And I drove with one hand and administered first aid to the baby as we

drove to the hospital.

So how many times were you shot?

I don't know the exact number.

I have a few scars in my back.

Where?

My mom and I have the same scar in the stomach.

You were shot in the head?

Yeah.

A lot of people obviously were involved in me surviving, so I'm very thankful.

The nurse, the police.

that was holding my wound, the stranger that took me.

Her left eye is a fake eye.

It was very, very

painful to see my daughter in a photo in this situation,

that I was not there with her.

The three of us were being operated on at that time in different hospitals.

I think if I had looked at him like that, it would have been... I think it

was one of my worst nightmares.

For this image.

I don't hold a grudge against this man.

Maybe if my daughter had died, maybe I would have had

a lot of grudge.

Were you given access inside the McDonald's? I saw the videotape and I

think for a long time I was the only one who did. The police department video

crew, who I'd been working with earlier that day, went in and

shot the aftermath scene before any of the bodies were

taken out.

And I saw that tape.

I wish I hadn't.

You're viewing the body of a male Mexican, approximately 10 years

old. He's wearing brown cords and a camouflage shirt.

He is located on the west sidewalk of the patio area at the McDonald's

restaurant.

We're viewing the body of a male Mexican, approximately 10 years old,

wearing brown shorts and a green t-shirt.

He is lying on his stomach with a large amount of vomit in front of his face.

We now view the remains of a female Mexican lying on her stomach.

She was wearing a pair of white pants and a white blouse.

Now viewing the remains of a male Mexican wearing blue shorts and a blue

shirt.

He is also lying on the west walkway right outside the double doors of the

restaurant area.

Just a little bit slower, Jim.

Watch yourself through here. It's pained up.

And also, the floor is slick.

Father's shot.

I looked over and I saw a McDonald uniform and I'm assuming that was Maggie

where she fell and got shot a bunch of times there and that was the most, that

was the most, that was the worst part of everything is seeing her.

I'll never forget, I'll never forget what she looked like.

I was the lieutenant and SWAT commander in San Ysidro in July of 1984.

If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything differently?

You have the worst case scenario you could possibly come up in San Diego.

You've got it right at the border, in rush hour traffic, when the light's on

those windows so you can't see through, when you have a madman firing.

251 rounds out through there at those police officers the whole time.

The windows had all been spidered by all the gunfire that he had already done.

You couldn't see in the building because of the sun.

And you've got victims all around the perimeter of the restaurant and inside

the restaurant. I don't know what you could do differently.

According to the Union Tribune, your beeper wasn't working. And you got word

about the shooting 30 minutes later. Is that true?

It is. I was the...

Top brass on the police department was having a workshop in Mission Bay.

I was facilitating that.

I didn't know. My beeper never went off.

At some point, a couple of the other beepers went off in the room, and they

told me I needed to get on the radio and respond immediately.

So why wasn't the beeper working?

Well, I don't know. This is 1984. We're not talking about the technology we have

now. Is it fair to say because the beeper wasn't working, that cost you

half an hour,

No, it's not fair to say that.

The Mexican community was absolutely crippled by this.

What would you like to tell the Mexican community? Well, you know, I learned

more that day about disasters than I've learned in everything since.

You know, no matter how well you perform, when 21 people die and 24

people are hurt, there's simply no way to say, I'm sorry.

According to La Prensa, a big newspaper in the South Bay, There were some keys

missing. Is that true?

Keys? Yes.

I don't know what that means.

Daniel Munoz wrote an article about how some keys were missing and the SWAT team

couldn't get inside their vehicles quickly enough to get to the scene.

Well, I would think Daniel Munoz may have made that up. I don't know that.

I've never heard that before.

They printed some articles when I was running for political office, and they

were obviously hit articles. They weren't based on fact. They were based

on emotion or just what they wanted to be based on.

So you think he just made that up? I mean, if he did, that's very

irresponsible. Well, I don't really have a clue. What exactly was that social

function you were at?

I was told that it might have even been a mini-party. There was drinking going

on.

I mean, Jerry, this is all I'm hearing. I know.

So it was a workshop that the chiefs put on. I was asked to help facilitate it

because I was a lieutenant in field operations and also the SWAT commander.

There was some type of strategic planning going on. It certainly wasn't a

party of any type, and I would imagine we held those probably two or three

times a year, and you do them during the work day.

So was there any drinking going on? Not that I recall.

Were you drinking?

Well, as a lieutenant, you don't drink around anybody.

And in fact, I never drank when I was in a position of authority on the police

department. What time did you get on scene?

I got on scene a little bit after 5 o'clock.

So I think I got my notification at about 4.34, 4.35, jumped right on the

freeway. But it was rush hour traffic.

At the end of the day, you'd have to say there were some mistakes made.

I don't think they were deliberately made.

When you say mistakes, can you be more specific?

Well, Jerry Sanders, I think, would admit that it was probably a mistake in

hindsight to have called off the green light, allowing the sniper to go ahead

and take a shot. But he was far away, and he didn't know what he had, and as a

SWAT commander, he needed to know what he had.

Some of the people interviewed in the movie talked about you rescinding that

green light.

Do you regret doing that? Did that lose time?

Some people said, well, shouldn't Jerry have had more trust in the people that

were there that day?

The green light is simply a term of art, and I don't think a lot of people

understood that.

With a red light, it simply means you can't take a shot if the person's not

presenting any danger.

Wanted to make sure we had an accurate description, that we knew how many

suspects were inside before we told people to shoot.

Foster said he knew all along he could have shot any time that he saw them, and

he would have.

Not having the green light does not mean it can't fire.

It's just that the suspect would have to be showing an immediate threat to

another officer or myself or to another person.

After that incident, we stopped using those code words and just went to plain

language. So it wasn't until after you went in there that you found out that

people had been murdered?

You bet.

You bet.

You bet. Nobody knew.

um you know that this guy was just by himself and and just arbitrarily

shooting people so no time during those 77 minutes law enforcement knew that

people were being murdered that's to my knowledge

you could see him moving around you could see the shadowy figure

in there and he was i actually saw him loading and reloading and firing into

the people and firing outside did you know that A man was in there shooting

babies, innocent people?

No. We knew that people were being shot.

We knew people had been shot. There were some on the perimeter.

There were also people who were alive on the perimeter crouched down, which meant

the officers couldn't rush it and couldn't fire back in there.

Did you see anyone else get murdered?

Yeah, I saw several people get shot.

As we arrived shortly after the incident began, the scene was one of absolute

confusion. Shots were ringing out. The nightmare was unfolding.

I saw one older woman carrying what looked like a child get shot in the

back, and the child sort of, the woman and the child fall, and then he takes

and started shooting into what looked like a lot of people, but all I could

see was the window and some signs and McDonald's arches, and it was really

tough to see through the glass, but it was clear what was going on in there.

The people who you saw get shot, were they inside the restaurant? Inside,

inside.

You couldn't see in the building because of the sun. They couldn't see anyone in

there, and they also didn't know who was in there.

I don't believe it was in anybody's mind, certainly not my own, that

anything else had happened other than possibly a robbery gone bad, and that

for some reason the shooter was still inside and shooting at the cops and

shooting at the firemen, but not...

killing off everybody inside that he could.

So what's the greater risk here, intervening and killing innocent people

or having some madman just firing away?

I simply don't know how you would do it differently, not having accurate

descriptions, having someone firing three different weapons so you think

there's three suspects.

You have to have a plan before you go in so you don't get more people killed.

At the beginning of the incident, we'd gotten at least three different...

suspect descriptions of possible shooters inside.

Just shooting one might anger any additional suspects inside to

then shoot hostages. And then we got information that brought it down to just

one suspect.

And once that was done, then we were once again given a green light.

He entered the facility heavily armed, immediately started shooting everybody.

The customers that were inside the restaurant had absolutely no chance to

escape.

The fact of the matter is, I don't know if you know this, the majority of the

people that were killed were killed within the first couple of minutes.

Now some witnesses I've already...

talk to would refute that?

I said the majority.

Commander Larry Gore said most if not all the victims were shot in the first

10 minutes.

Do you agree with that?

No, that never happened.

Why would they make such a irresponsible statement like that?

I can't speak for them.

When Albert got shot he was hiding and got discovered and that wasn't until

well into halfway into it and he was with three or four other people and they

all ran and like Couple of them died and the other ones got shot. So that wasn't

the first ten minutes I

tend to believe someone who was actually inside there Watching it feeling it

hearing it. You said it was consistent throughout right? So like 40 people were

shot so over the 77 minutes that's an average of one person getting hit every

two minutes so you think it was pretty consistent no i think they did shoot a

lot in the beginning he did shoot a lot of people in the beginning but i don't

think that the majority is killed in the first 10 minutes i mean some of them

were shot and not dead like emts could have came in and saved them you know if

they would have had access to come into the building so they laid there and he

would get i don't know bored or i don't know what his problem he would reshoot

people what would you like to tell ronald edetta who was shot 45 minutes

apart and is angry i believe to this day about well and he should be angry to

this day i would be angry also once again i want to i want to tell you that

being a victim inside for 77 minutes is much different than trying to plan the

response police also said that Most if not all the victims were killed in the

first 10 minutes Now how would they know that if they couldn't see inside?

Well, I believe that from witness statements and from things that people

told us That you know that his initial firing he walked around he shot people

People had already gone down. He shot him again.

I Believe he shot people for a period of time in there 10 maybe 15 minutes, but

beyond that point, he was concentrating his firing and his efforts on police

officers. Maybe they bled to death because it took an hour and 17 minutes.

According to the coroner's office, 13 of the deceased victims inside would have

died almost immediately when they were shot.

Several others could have survived for a few minutes, but...

probably not a long time so again who knows it's pure speculation at this

point why was the murderer handcuffed when he was already dead it was swat

policy at the time to immediately handcuff the suspect they felt that he

was dead they checked him but they had many other wounded people in there that

needed help and so that was their first thought was to save life and protect

life

How did you ID some of the bodies?

When I identified, it was the second day because this was a long investigation.

The bodies were there for quite some time.

The homicide people took Polaroids of all of the victims that were there, and

we set up an auditorium, and it was a short distance away from McDonald's.

This was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my

career. I had Polaroid pictures of...

Kids that had been murdered and I had to show those pictures to the audience

because obviously these kids don't carry Identification in their pocket as an

adult would so when I held those photographs up and my partner did we

would see people that would immediately be affected in the crowd that would

recognize that as one of their loved ones and We would have to contact that

either person individual or groups and they would be crying and emotional and

we would get crying

excuse me, and emotional ourselves, and we would have to get the information.

I mean, that probably is the most outstanding thing in my mind of this

whole situation, other than the sorrow and the heartbreak that took place with

all the people in the community.

We really didn't have a whole lot of violence there. A lot of Mexican

families, a little bit of poverty, but nice community.

What it was known for was the heroin because of the proximity to the border.

That's what kept us busy.

Other than that, peaceful, very pleasant place to work.

I never had a bad experience in San Ysidro, but I know from crime statistics

that it can be an edgy place.

Anything south of Interstate 8 fits kind of that profile in varying respects.

It's the busiest border crossing in the world. Imagine the millions of stories

that can be told, good, bad, and indifferent, and San Ysidro is the

place, and it is within the city of San Diego. The city of San Diego found a

strange way to annex it so that the San Diego police could control that part

of the border area.

because it can be so dangerous and can be so fluid.

City of San Diego City Fathers made a conscious decision that we need to be on

top of that. That needs to be within the incorporated jurisdiction that we can

govern, police, and serve.

San Ysidro is a wonderful little area, but it's been forgotten and marginalized

and underrepresented forever.

They don't think that San Ysidro gets its due, and they just wanted the border

area.

So the city of San Diego annexed it, but the community is misunderstood and

underserved.

Al, you were quoted as saying that the police are here to serve and protect.

And you said that day we did not serve and protect.

I appreciate your candor.

You want to elaborate on that? Do you still believe that today as we sit here?

In some respects, yes, I do. I think the thing is that when I said it was, it

wasn't because we didn't do our job.

It was because we didn't have enough tools.

We didn't have the intelligence, what was going on. We didn't have the

training up to date like they do now. Things police officers do now are

totally different from what we did back then.

Tell me some of the procedures that changed. I know the SWAT team changed

things. Tell us the overall impact and the changes that this created.

I think the biggest thing over the years is it has made us aware of the active

shooter situation. No longer are we just going to surround and contain that we

need to get in there or police officers need to get in there and take some kind

of action when there is an active shooter going on. I mean, you get paid

to save life, and that's what you've got to do. And police officers know that

they've got to risk their lives sometimes.

I remember being a little bit pissed off about being armed with a .38 and having

this guy armed with a Nuzi.

It made me aware of the weaponry that's out there and the dangers that police

officers face, and the public as well.

Obviously the model has changed.

Now when we have active shooters, we respond and we go inside a building or

we go wherever the active shooter is until we put the threat down.

That's how we do business now, because we have so many mass shootings all over

the world and, you know, the parts of the United States.

And I'm proud of what it's evolved to.

We expanded the training. We went to a full-time SWAT team.

It was called SRT. All they did were SWAT duties.

They had take-home vehicles. They were completely prepared all the time.

We learned from all these incidents, better tactics, newer tactics, you know,

things like the robots.

We now have our own fleet of helicopters, have different frequencies

just for SWAT, different radios, much better capabilities and all of that. And

I think the training probably picked up fairly dramatically after that.

So why do these shootings still continue today, and are there any preventive

measures?

Well, we still have deranged people. Somebody who had mental instability, his

family said he did.

He told them he was going out to hunt people, and nobody calls us.

In the morning of the following day, I get a phone call from the shooter's

wife.

and she asked for me by name in the newsroom, called the newsroom, and when

I picked up the phone, I didn't know who it was.

I just answered the phone, and I said, hello, and she goes, hi, this is the

shooter's wife. She says, I need to tell my story, and sat down with her, and

she told me about his propensity to shoot weapons in their basement.

Told me about what was going on in his head.

just the days prior to the shooting, and how he was very calm about everything

else, but he was very, very much anti-immigrant.

He really did not like immigrants.

He hated immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants.

The wife told you this?

The wife told me this in the interview.

On the morning of the San Ysidro shooting, had about 180 to 200 people in

for arraignment on minor traffic violations.

Our check-in time at that was 8 a.m.

He probably came in sometime between 8 and 8.30 that morning.

He came up and gave me a fairly substantial story. I was pretty hard

-nosed about reducing fines, and he indicated that he was from Ohio.

Had only been here for a couple of months, didn't realize that it was a

violation. I can't even tell you what the violation was, but it was minor.

And I ended up suspending a $75 fine.

He exited the courtroom, had his wife and daughter with him.

He was pleasant, articulate, showed no stress, showed no anger.

He was the last person out of the courtroom that morning.

And certainly with his plea of guilty with that explanation, he had the

patience to wait all morning.

And he didn't, even with that three and a half hour wait between signing in for

his court appearance and making the explanation, he didn't appear to be the

least bit upset.

They left there, they went to a McDonald's restaurant, basically right

across the street from the courthouse, and had a meal.

And then on the way...

back to San Ysidro, they made a snap decision to go to the zoo.

They went to the zoo and they were walking around looking at the exhibits

and the suspect said to his wife, well, society had its chance.

And she thought that was a little odd, but she took it as one of his often

irrational statements that he made when they got back to the apartment she was

tired she said she's going in and lay down and take a rest he came in sometime

later and he said to her i'm going hunting i'm going hunting people a lot

of people have told me that this was an attack on mexican people would you agree

with that why didn't he commit the act in claremont why didn't he do it at the

zoo he didn't kill his family so he knew exactly who he was firing at well i

don't know i think more likely first of all he didn't have his weapons with him

when he went to court when he went to the mcdonald's in in claremont he may

have gone in there seen a lot of people in that restaurant and maybe this helped

set him off you know

In this documentary, I refuse to mention the killer's name because it's not worth

it. Do you think if killers knew going in that their name would not be

mentioned in the media, do you think we'd see less murders in our country

because the killer will know going in that my name won't be mentioned?

I think that might be a good thing because they're looking for fame and to

go down in history as the mass murderer or whatever, and I respect you for not

putting the name in there.

Did you become a policeman because of this incident?

Yes. It was one of the main reasons why I became a police officer.

After I survived the massacre and I was recovering, I had some sleeping

problems where I had nightmares.

And the nightmares were that I couldn't save the people inside the McDonald's. I

couldn't save the babies, the women, the children.

It took me a long time to little by little work through that.

After I became a police officer, I was... driving down the roadway about 2

2 30 in the morning and i came upon a burning vehicle i just thought it was

just a burning vehicle i didn't think anyone was inside the vehicle it was

about two in the morning nobody else on the freeway and so i pulled over and

when i got out of the vehicle i heard someone yelling and screaming from the

vehicle so i approached the vehicle was completely engulfed and i just Went into

action. I broke the window I reached in I grabbed him and I yanked him out of

the vehicle and I was able to save his life Even though he burned about 70% of

his body He ended up falling asleep behind the wheel after working roughly

18 hours as a painter and his vehicle rolled over a couple of times and it

caught fire and he was trapped in the vehicle and I just had to come at the

right time and and I just felt like Hey, I saved someone's life. I had a second

chance. There's a reason why I'm here.

There's a reason why I'm a police officer. And God gave me that

opportunity where I didn't freeze and I was finally able to come through and

save someone.

Does it bother you that today the media, we glorify the killer and we don't talk

about the victims?

Yes. I think they should do more stories on the victims.

One way or another, their names and who they are should be out there.

More stories should be done of them instead of the actual shooter and his

issues and his problems and his family and their problems.

How does that make us better as a society knowing all that? Right.

It was one night after they gave it to me.

We were asleep, and she fell off the bed.

She was sleeping with us, and she fell off the bed.

And I screamed very loudly, and I started screaming, the girl, the

girl. My husband told me, calm down.

The girl is fine. I started screaming, but...

like when I looked at her, she was bleeding.

The girl, the girl, and I started to cry.

It was a very strong scare.

It was as if they had shot her.

I felt as if they had killed her, as if I was not going to see her anymore.

And it was a simple fall from the bed.

She had fallen from the bed, nothing else.

I couldn't calm down at all, and he said to me, calm down, it's okay, it's just a

simple fall from the bed, it's okay.

And I said to him,

I swear you're okay.

I swear you're okay.

That's what happened.

I think that night was when...

I realized the magnitude of what had happened to the three of us.

That night, all of a sudden, I realized that I

had been a victim of that massacre

at McDonald's.

My mom has an album of all

the cards that people sent her about me, like, get well.

She has checks that people sent, and she never cashed.

But they were, like, small checks, like $10, $5.

She has, so, yeah, people supported us a lot.

We appreciate that.

I read every card.

If you had to tell the shooter one thing, what would that be?

Why?

What were you thinking?

Do you think about him every day?

Because I already have another life with another man, my husband.

But I will never forget all of that.

Because it's something that I went through and something that I lived

through. I couldn't say goodbye to him there because he had my daughters hurt.

And I wanted to be with him and say goodbye and tell him to take us away, to

not leave us.

And I couldn't because I had to go with my daughters who were sick.

And well, he always knows that I always loved him a lot.

My name is Maria.

I came to Aquino and my sister was Paulina Aquino López.

That day she was going to work and then she

told me that she didn't want to go to work because it hurt her head.

And I told her, you have to go because you just started working, you have to

fulfill. And she said that...

He didn't want to go.

And I told him, Andra, you have to do it. And then he went to work.

The whole family in the United States was talking to Tijuana to see where

Paulina was.

They couldn't find her. They couldn't communicate with San Isidro.

So I told them to watch TV so they could see what was going on.

So my mom started praying from that moment on

Tell us about your sister.

Were you upset that it took law enforcement 77 minutes before taking out

the killer?

Sorry.

to forgive me.

I wanted it to be fulfilled and that I love her very much.

That now I would respect the fact that I said, I don't want to go to work.

That I learned from that not to pressure people who have to do things, who have

to decide their own things.

We all used to ride our bikes all over San Ysidro at the time. It was back when

you could do that.

So we'd get on our bikes and ride. That's mostly what we did after school.

My husband came home from work, I don't know, 5, 530. I didn't know anything

about it.

You know, and he said, did you hear about San Ysidro? I turned it on, and I

was in total shock, of course, you know, and I was glued to the television. About

an hour or so later, the principal called. She said it was Omar.

All kinds of feelings, I think, I went through, my goodness, feeling guilty. I

have my two kids sitting here, and they're alive, and so I did go right

down the next morning to see his mom. I just felt I had to. I couldn't stay at

home.

My father was the joy of the house of my father and my parents.

He was a child, well, as I say, restless,

cheerful.

He didn't know English.

He learned English through jazz.

He would divide us into a circle.

We were on one side and they were on the other.

So they would start talking.

The jazz in English, the Omar in Spanish.

They started to understand each other.

And from there, that very beautiful friendship between them was born.

My father encouraged him a lot.

He loved him a lot, just like my mother.

But the fate was that he would no longer move forward.

But he was a playful, cheerful child.

He was a companion, a good friend.

Apart de ser hermano.

If you had one last moment with Omar, what would you tell him?

No sé lo que sería ahorita él de grande, cuál sería si estuviera casado,

estuviera estudiando, pero lo animaría a ser un hombre como mi papá lo quiso, ser

un hombre correcto, educado,

seguir lo que ellos nos enseñaron.

A lot of people told me that the shooter hated Mexican people.

What do you think of that?

It was our 911.

I remember days after, people were stunned and shocked, and we treated each

other more respectfully.

Everybody held doors for each other and let people merge on the roads. I think

the Southwestern College perhaps was a little bit of a redemption for our

community in that people could maybe turn a horrific thing into something

positive.

I had something inside me that was telling me,

that something was going to happen.

Many times I had premonitions of that.

Many times I would wonder, what if my brother died?

And I would.

And I would go to his bed and sleep next to him.

And he would wake up.

He would say, hey, what are you doing in my bed?

So honestly, I was ready for it.

I'm scared of those premonitions now.

I would just hold him.

Hold him.

when he was asleep though, so he wouldn't wake up.

So when it did happen, mentally I was ready.

But yeah, we've spoken in our dreams, in my dreams, I've spoken to him.

He's okay. He's with my uncles over there, my grandparents.

He's saying, it's good.

Don't come here yet. You will eventually, but he saved me a spot in

heaven.

Every time I step onto that campus,

I remember the day that I was sitting in my living room watching the events of

this attack unfold.

And what I have to do is push myself through those doors, up into that

classroom, into that forum where I can hopefully turn that sentiment

into a positivity.

Before the incident, I was a good kid. I was happy.

And afterwards, I was a different kid.

I didn't want to hang out with my friends anymore.

I became very aggressive.

I was very unhappy and carried guilt.

Not really realizing it, but I carried guilt.

Ronald Herrera, also critically hurt from orange, was taken to the trauma

center for initial evaluation.

Okay, I sent the blood to the operating room, all right? Bye.

I need a warm blanket.

Right about here.

Hey,

Ron, talk to me.

Talk to me now. You're not talking anymore.

Ron, put your arms down by your side. You're doing fine.

I think about what he would be like today and what our relationship would be

like today.

Matteo was a lot like Blythe and Ron in the fact that he was just gentle

and kind.

He was a really good artist.

We just had this connection, you know, that we loved the same things. We loved

Star Wars.

We loved music.

I used to just be mesmerized by his ability to draw.

People would say, oh, God, you know, was ready to take him home.

And I love God and I trust God, but I don't always understand God.

I don't really understand what happened and why they're gone.

Do you think about this every day?

No.

No.

I wouldn't be able to live. When I used to think about it every day, it hindered

my entire life.

What I thought, where I went, how I acted, everything.

It was all around that, like my safety. I was so intimidated by loud noises or

abrupt people or like being in crowds and just so many ways that it

gets you.

My name is Adriana Wright. I lost my sister at the San Ysidro Massacre,

Jackie Reyes, and my nephew Carlos.

Jackie was 18 and Carlos was 8 months.

I think it was about a month before she had just baptized Carlos.

She probably would have had like 12 kids, you know, because Jackie loved

kids. Jackie was full of life and Jackie wanted more kids and that's, you know,

that was her main intention.

Carlos, we put him in his little suit of his baptism.

And Jackie, well, we were going to dress her in her pink dress that she had, but

we couldn't because she was all destroyed.

She had no more neck or anything.

The baby just had, you know, he looked like he was asleep, so we were wondering

if he was dead or not because we would hold him from his right hand and it was

cold, but his left hand was really warm because he received one bullet in his

heart.

I never knew Jackie had gotten so many bullets. I knew she protected my niece.

All I know is that she was doing what her instincts were to protect, like she

was protecting her child too.

But with so many bullets, I mean, she lost the strength.

Imelda too, you know, she was holding her little sister.

her little sister's head exploded in her arms.

But she prayed a lot for God to give her strength.

If you had one last thing to tell Jackie, what would that be?

Well, that I know she's my angel.

I know she's with me.

Even though I can't see her, I know she's here with me. I can feel her.

You know, it's hard to explain, but I know she's with me.

Because of the physical location of Southern Division and San Ysidro

compared to the rest of the city, sure, there was a time delay in getting a lot

of officers there.

Within the first 19 minutes, containment, now containment means we've

got it surrounded, you know, we're controlling the situation inside the

restaurant. Within 19 minutes, that was accomplished with the officers that were

present. The people, by the time you guys got there and you guys shot them

and you guys went in to try to save them, they all bled to death because the

people that did survive, they came to us and they told us that they were still

alive, but they bled to death.

You can bleed to death in seconds or minutes or hours. It just depends on the

wounds and the injuries. So the people that survived obviously were able to do

that and still bleed.

But I think that if they would have been there sooner.

or if they would have gone in sooner or killed them sooner, then yeah, people

would have survived.

Well, I disagree with it under the circumstances of this.

The officers didn't know how many people were in there, how many people were

shooting, you know, because they heard three separate weapons being fired.

They didn't know that they were dealing with one.

one suspect at the time and questions always come up well why didn't they put

gas in there what would happen if you threw a gas grenade tear gas grenade in

with a bunch of people that were still alive in there as victims probably would

be in total panic they'd probably jump up and run around so they would end up

as additional victims because they would put be putting themselves in harm's way

I've learned that time doesn't stop, because if you don't keep moving and you

don't keep healing, then you're always going to be bitter, you're always going

to be upset, you're always going to try to hide, and I'm not.

I have to move forward, and I have to value things now differently and move

on, move on with life.

I only think about it when someone else brings it up.

My youngest daughter found some information relating to it in my

bookcase and asked me about it about a month ago, and I probably hadn't thought

about it for years since.

Do you feel you got away with something that day?

Do I feel I got away with something?

So many innocent people were murdered.

The Mexican community was really upset.

A lot of the victims who I've interviewed already said, where's the

police? Where are they? Ronald and Etta got shot 45 minutes apart.

Do you feel like you got away with something?

No. I think the police department did the best job they possibly could given

the circumstances.

Could the police have shown more guts that day and the SWAT team? The SWAT

team and the police showed great guts that day.

How and why?

They were under fire constantly. They just didn't indiscriminately start

spraying the building, which would be the instinct of a lot of people.

They withheld their fire five rounds, were fired by police officers, and none

of them injured anybody.

See, this is such a tough case because if you ask victims, they're angry.

If you ask the police, well, we did what we were told.

So how does one look at this?

It's just... Well, I'll tell you how you look at it. Bad shit happens, and that's

it.

And there's not always a rhyme or reason. You do the best you possibly can

under the circumstances, and then you feel bad for survivors.

What would you like to tell all the victims who were killed or wounded at

this time?

I would just give them the advice that give

your troubles to God, and He'll help you get through it. He'll

never give you more than you can take.

I know that.

If you had all the victims in one room right now, what would you tell them?

I'm sorry that I couldn't help them.

If you had one thing to say to all the victims, if you had one chance at all in

one room, what would you say to them?