To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > News August 11, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/08/11/jcc_shooting L.A. killer's "wake-up call to America to kill Jews" Anti-Semitism was the motive in Tuesday's shooting at a Jewish day-care center in Los Angeles. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Vivienne Walt After months of lethal shootings that have shattered suburbs across the country, the season of violence finally arrived Tuesday in Los Angeles, where images of bloody mayhem are usually crafted into splashy entertainment. This time, however, the burst of automatic fire, the squadrons of bomb specialists and FBI officers and the stretchers with victims airlifted to local hospitals were no movie scenes. Just before 11 o'clock Tuesday morning, a plump, balding white man who appeared to be about 40 walked through the front entrance of the North Valley Jewish Community Center on Renaldi Avenue in this San Fernando Valley suburb, about 38 miles from downtown Los Angeles. He opened fire with an AR-15 Bushmaster rifle, spraying 70 bullets in an arc across the reception area and one classroom, before fleeing. Five people were wounded, including three small children who attend a day-care center here. About 12 hours later, Los Angeles police identified a suspect in the shootings: Buford O. Furrow, 37, a resident of Washington state, who owned the red van police discovered Tuesday afternoon filled with explosives, ammunition, survivalist gear and pamphlets associated with the Christian Identity movement, an extremist, white supremacist, anti-Semitic sect. When he turned himself in in Las Vegas Wednesday, Furrow told authorities he wanted the shooting to be "a wake-up call to America to kill Jews." About 20 minutes after the shooting, Furrow allegedly hijacked a green 1999 Toyota Corolla about two miles from the center, near Van Nuys Airport in the San Fernando Valley. He abandoned his red van with Washington state plates and made off at high speed in the Toyota. The police immediately surrounded the van, picking through it gingerly. About two hours later, they laid out a bounty of survivalist gear and weaponry: four boxes of ammunition, containing thousands of bullets, much of it automatic firepower, as well as a U.S. Army Ranger Handbook -- a tactical field guide for infantrymen -- a military knife and some CDs. Also inside was a booklet called "War Cycle Peace Cycle," published in Virginia. The Web site advertising the book talks about cracking down on civil disobedience, and also offers a Christian newsletter. Exactly what Christian Identity materials were discovered in the van has not been disclosed. But the movement holds that white Northern Europeans are the true "Israelites" and all other races are "mud people." Abortion clinic bombing suspect Eric Rudolph attended a Christian Identity commune in Missouri, where the pastor proclaimed that "the Jews are the devil's seed and the children of the anti-Christ." Late Tuesday, FBI agents visited an Olympia, Wash., house, believed to be the home of Furrow's father, and neighbors told reporters they'd been interviewed by the FBI about Furrow's behavior and possible whereabouts. KING-TV in Seattle says Furrow is a suspect in an ammunition theft from an Army base near Tacoma. An Internet search for Buford Furrow turned up an entry from a man by that name in Olympia, Wash., where the suspect is believed to live, in the guestbook of the Web site of the Osborne Brothers, a country-western band. "Saw you on Grand Old Opry (19/12/98) when you gave out your web page info," he wrote. "You have been by my brother-in-law's place a few times in Columbia, SC, Bill Wells. I grew up on country music, Blue Grass, back in Roanoke, Va. Just like to say that I enjoy you guys, not enough of the real 'old time' music being played any more. Keep up the good work. Buford." By about 6.30 p.m., a huge force of special-weapons officers from the LAPD had surrounded the 7 Star Suites Hotel in Chatsworth, bolstered by FBI agents and bomb specialists. As night fell, they hoisted an armored vehicle on to the hotel roof, preparing to burst into the building. The police were tipped off by a passer-by, who saw the Toyota parked in the hotel parking lot after local TV stations had broadcast the car's plate for hours. But by 10.30, 12 hours after the shooting, it still wasn't clear that Furrow was inside the hotel, nor that he was alive. Yet the stakeout continued. Although the carnage was less than that at Columbine High, the attack on a day-care center with ties to the Jewish community shook the city, and the nation. One victim, a 5-year-old boy, spent the afternoon not playing with his friends, but undergoing painstaking surgery to remove four bullets from his stomach and leg. By last night, he was in fair condition, and was going to be airlifted to Los Angeles Children's Hospital, which has a pediatric trauma center. The other victims -- a 6-year-old boy, an 8-year-old boy, a 16-year-old student counselor and a 68-year-old receptionist, Isabelle Shamoleth -- were in good condition. A teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity said the receptionist burst into her room with a wounded arm. The teacher said she gathered up her students, who joined hands and evacuated from the building. "You just kind of wonder where is a place that you're safe at?" asked Jack Bloom, who stood among a crowd of shaken parents outside the center, waiting to see their children emerge from the building. Bloom's son Scott is a 21-year-old counselor at the center's summer program. Another parent, Richard Macales, stood reciting Hebrew psalms, a yarmulke on his head, while he waited for his two children, aged 2 and 3, to be led out of the building. "My feeling about it is it's another case of someone acting out in rage," he said. "I don't want to believe this is an act of anti-Semitism here in 1999." As if addressing the gunman, LAPD spokesman Kalish told the crowd of reporters on the sidewalk across the street: "You can run, but you can't hide. It's only a matter of time." But despite the tough talk, so far one lone gunman has evaded the largest police hunt this city has seen for a long time -- perhaps since O.J. Simpson's low-speed chase in 1994. The force included about 250 officers, including L.A.'s entire SWAT team, and a large contingent of FBI officers dispatched by Attorney General Janet Reno within hours of the shooting. In the four months since 12 students and a teachers were massacred in Littleton, Colo., the summer has been marked by repeated shootings, the latest 10 days ago at two Atlanta day-trading centers, where Mark O. Barton killed nine people before shooting himself. Among the culprits the pundits have pointed to these past months has been the movie industry. And Tuesday's events in the industry's hometown indeed unfolded like some low-grade crime film. It was the latest attack on a quiet, middle-class neighborhood, where families buy homes with alarms and send their children to private schools: Littleton, Colo.; Conyers, Ga.; Wilmette, Ill. That, perhaps, as well as the jolting familiarity of it all, brought an astonishingly rapid political response. "Once again, our nation has been shaken and our hearts torn by an act of gun violence," President Clinton told reporters grimly outside the White House about three hours after the shooting. Then he grabbed the moment for a subtle hit at the National Rifle Association, saying the incident should "intensify our resolve to make America a safer place." Even before Clinton appeared, Vice President Al Gore had already offered FBI help to the overstretched Los Angeles police force. Shortly after the shooting, both L.A. police Chief Bernard Parks and a stone-faced Mayor Richard Riordan rushed to the community center to meet parents and talk to reporters. "This is a sad day for the city of Los Angeles," Riordan said. An hour or so later, Gov. Gray Davis went on television from his Sacramento office to remind voters that he had just banned automatic rifle sales in California, effective Jan. 1, 2000. Even a long-silent figure from the Los Angeles riots seven years ago -- former police Chief Daryl Gates -- spoke out Tuesday, telling MSNBC that somehow, no one much noticed the epidemic of gun violence when the victims were "blacks and gangs." salon.com | August 11, 1999