Wow, never knew about the 1984 McDonald's massacre. (Roman, 80s, origin)
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I knew of the Lubby's massacre but that's the first time I ever heard of the one at McDonald's. Does anyone here remember hearing about it on the news or radio?
For getting shot and having two of his friends killed that boy seems awfully chipper about it.
It was the first instance of current thinking that police were making a mistake of waiting for SWAT. Outside those of us in military and police at the time it did spend time as the lead story but it was before competitive 24/7 news as entertainment networks.
There was something about the song "The Warrior" being played during the shooting.. Not sure if that was an urban legend or not.
That doesn't seem to add up, however, since the song was released in August of 84 and the Mcdonalds shooting happened in JUly.
The single The Warrior was released on June 30, 1984 (the album on which it appeared was released in August - albums often have an advance single).
However, I highly doubt the story that James Huberty had it cranked on a boombox when he began killing people.
First, he lugged three weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition into the McDonald's - I highly doubt he bothered with a big and bulky mid-80s-type boombox.
Second, the song hadn't yet cracked the Top 40 at the time of the shooting. It wasn't yet well-known, and I highly doubt that Scandal was the cup of tea of a Vietnam vet who had graduated high school in the early 1960s.
Third, the 'warrior' in the song is glaringly obvious as a romantic metaphor. It's an atrociously bad one, even by the impressive low standards of crappy rock and roll, but it's still obvious.
On no level does it make a shred of sense that Huberty bothered with music, or that he would have had any interest in the wailing of Patty Smyth.
Anyway, I can find no contemporary reports of the song being played during the massacre, just lots of vague 'some people say' or 'it's been said' assertions that have all the substance of a fart in the wind.
I was on vacation in Virginia Beach when this happened. Oddly enough the motel we were staying was located right next to a new McDonalds. The main top 40 radio station in Virginia Beach at the time was Z104 and they were sponsoring some big event at that McDonalds. When news broke about the shooting I can remember looking out from our motel window and watching the staff from Z104 packing up their gear and drove away. For some reason I seem to recall that McDonalds closed early that day even though the restaurant was located near the oceanfront and being a hot summer day I can imagine that lots of money was lost since the Z104/McDonalds event was of course cancelled. I believe the next day both the local NBC affiliate WAVY channel 10 and the local Virginian Pilot newspaper gave kudos to Z104 for deciding to cancel the event out of respect to the victims of the California McDonalds massacre. I also can recall listening to Z104 that day that the disc jockeys were quite sad. No they didn't really talk about the incident on the air but it was easy to tell that they were not in the mood to play the current top 40 music of the day even though that's what they did.
Last edited by tantan1968; 05-23-2016 at 05:23 PM..
I knew of the Lubby's massacre but that's the first time I ever heard of the one at McDonald's. Does anyone here remember hearing about it on the news or radio?
For getting shot and having two of his friends killed that boy seems awfully chipper about it.
I actually have the original newspaper clippings on the shooting
I remember it -- San Ysidro, CA. The Mcdonalds is gone and it's now a park...
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