In August 1999, a white supremacist shot up a Jewish Community Center in L.A., wounding three children and two women
That was then and this is now. With the media constantly picturing the ‘plight’ of the Gazans, you can expect the Jew-haters to crawl out from under their rocks to attack Jews, synagogues and other Jewish institutions.
FOREMER L.A. POLICE CHIEF RECALLS JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER SHOOTING
By Brenda Gazzar
Los Angeles Daily News
August 10, 2014
Former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Bernard Parks recalled Sunday a high-anxiety and chaotic scene when he responded to the Jewish center shooting in Granada Hills 15 years ago that wounded five people, including three small children.
A white supremacist gunman, who was later identified as Buford O’Neal Furrow Jr., had walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun and fired about 70 shots. The armed felon on probation from Washington state would later go on to fatally shoot a Filipino-American mail carrier Jospeh Ileto nine times while shouting racial epithets in nearby Chatsworth.
“The most sensitive part of the whole issue was ... separating the crime scene part of it to allow the parents in to get to their kids,” Parks, today a city councilman, said of the immediate aftermath at the JCC. “There were some very raw emotions. People wanted to scale the walls and go find their kids on their own. We basically held the line until there was a sense that the crime scene was protected and there was an orderly process for parents and kids to be connected.”
The LAPD’s homicide investigators were brought in and decided they should handle both the JCC shooting and the postal worker death since it seemed odd that there had been two shootings in that general area within roughly an hour, Parks said. The chief and detectives initially speculated that the two incidents were connected but they weren’t able to confirm it until later that day, he said.
On Aug. 10, 1999, police received a frantic call by an employee reporting that a heavily armed suspect was firing a possible Uzi-type weapon at women and children, according to LAPD documents from that year. The assistant watch commander notified the acting area commanding officer and within four minutes after the call, patrol units from the Devonshire division started arriving at the scene and soon requested rescue ambulances.
After additional officers arrived from several divisions, a search and rescue operation began. Officers ran toward the front lobby door of the community center, which officials described then as “sheer pandemonium.” Sixteen-year-old camp counselor Mindy Finkelstein, who played dead after she was shot twice in the legs, was found on the sidewalk with a trail of blood emanating from the lobby. Officers flagged down an ambulance for her and then ran to the front door in “combat-ready positions,” according to the documents.
“I was shot and then I ran into an arts-and-crafts room,” Finkelstein, 31, of Berkeley, recalled recently. “There was a bunch of kids in there and other counselors. ... The kids were looking up at me and screaming. I was covered in blood.”
Finkelstein said they ran through the emergency exit door of the room and then outside the building but she had to stop running because she had lost so much blood.
In the hallway, a woman was seen holding a towel to a small boy who had been shot in his back and legs while another woman was seen at the front desk with gunshot wounds to her arm. As officers provided cover, paramedics entered the lobby area to treat the wounded victims. Several officers conducted a room-to-room search for the suspect and any additional victims. Several children were found hiding in a classroom and were escorted to a secure location across the street, according to LAPD.
When word reached officers that a 6-year-old boy lay wounded on the floor with two apparent gunshot wounds in another small building, officers moved across the parking lot — with a police helicopter on guard overheard — to reach the boy. Paramedics arrived to treat the critically injured boy “in the nick of time,” LAPD officials said.
About 15 uninjured children, who were also inside the building, were led out in a human chain to a nearby convalescent hospital. As witnesses came forward, police learned the suspect had stolen a car from a woman at gunpoint on Roscoe Boulevard. They then learned that a van laden with explosive materials was abandoned near the scene of the carjacking, which helped detectives identify the suspect and obtain a driver’s license photograph of him from Washington state.
“The next morning it became a national story,” Parks said. “(Then Mayor) Mr. (Richard) Riordan and I were on all the three major network morning shows. After that, it was a matter of bringing the investigation to conclusion,” Parks said. “ There was a lot of contact in the Jewish community, going to meetings, reducing their anxiety. Was this something that was going to continue? Was it an isolated incident?”
Furrow led authorities on a federal manhunt of nearly 22 hours before he surrendered himself to the FBI in Las Vegas. He avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to murder and firearms charges and is serving two consecutive life sentences and another 110 years running consecutively with those life sentences.
After the incident, L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich initiated a program in which probation officers, in conjunction with local law enforcement, conduct searches of probationers who are subject to unannounced searches targeting guns, drugs and other contraband. The program has resulted in nearly 20,000 arrests and seized more than 9,000 weapons and more than $530 million in illegal drugs and drug money since early 2000, according to spokesman Tony Bell.
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