elfismiles wrote:
I've never been confronted face to face by someone wielding a loaded firearm.
However, I was shot at (along with everybody else in attendance) by Ira Attebury, a PCP addicted war veteran who wanted to commit suicide-by-cop and killed several people, including people who had been sitting where my mother, cousin and I had been sitting before my mother decided we'd get sun-burned there.
viewtopic.php?p=336089#p336089
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I am a survivor of this 1979 shooting spree...
Battle of Flowers Parade
http://www.battleofflowers.org/battle-o ... arade.aspx
In 1979, the parade did not take place on the advice of the police because of a tragic incident that occurred 30 minutes before it was to begin.
http://www.battleofflowers.org/about-us/history.aspx
April 26 in San Antonio history…
Apr 26 - Posted by sapltexana
...
1979: Ira Attebury sprays crowd with shotgun and semiautomatic rifle fire from parked motorhome during Battle of Flowers parade (right). Two die, 55 are wounded. Attebury commits suicide as SWAT teams close in.
http://mysapl.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/ ... history-2/
SMiles EHE AutoBio Danger: Parade
(The following is a short description of this experience. I wrote this for my freshman high school english class.)
As we rounded the corner, running as fast as we could, tear gas grenades had just started to fall. I then thought to my self, "How could a day this perfect have so much death and blood-shed?"
It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. My mother, my cousin, and I were going to the "Battalla de Flowers" [sic?] parade in San Antonio.
While my mother was looking for a place to sit, I carried the folding chairs. My cousin Lisa and I saw a place to sit. There was a spot in front of a small blue trailer with the freeway up and behind it. It looked like a great place to sit to us, but my mother of course disagreed. She said, "No, we'll get sun burned!" So we ended up getting a place on the other side of the street with a used car place in back of us. Other people quickly took the place on the other side of the street which my mother had rejected. I distinctly remember where we were sitting. Behind us people were sitting on the hoods of the used cars. Above them an advertising balloon was floating.
Soon the parade started, and we could here the deep sound of the beating drums in the background, coming closer. When they finally reached us I saw beautiful floats, women in long flowing dresses, and Academy people twirling fake guns. Then it started!
At first everyone thought that the sounds were fireworks or kids playing with firecrackers. We were wrong! We knew something was wrong when people everywhere started falling. Their limp bodies hitting the ground like beef on a butcher table. The next thing I knew I was on the ground. At first I thought I had been shot. My mother had pushed me and my cousin on the ground and was laying on my back. She then pulled the chairs on top of us. The people to the left of us had been hit but we found out later that their blue-jeans had stopped the bullets from doing worse damage than they did (Thank God for Calvin Klein). The people whom we were facing, while lyeing on our stomaches, were also hit. When they were hit blood was falling right in front of my face. We were lyeing there for an eternity it seemed when someone finally did something. A man who was in back of us jumped up and told us what to do. He said, "He's gotten the cops! There's no one who can help us!" Panic stricken, everyone, including us, started to run, following his lead. As we were running all I could see were silver objects with smoke belching forth.
As we rounded the corner we saw a woman in a long white old car. She gestured to us to come to her. She then asked what was going on. We told her some maniac was shooting people. She then asked, "Well are they gonna finish the parade after they shoot him?" We just looked at her and then ran. We kept running till we finally came to our friend's house who was living close by.
We later found out that the sniper had a grocery cart full of guns and ammo for them. Seven people were killed and about fifty-two were injured. Four of the people killed were the people who were sitting where I had wanted to sit. In front of the "Blue Trailer." That's where he was, in the blue trailler.
Thank God for mother's intuition. If it weren't for her we'd all be dead!
http://www.elfis.net/elfol6/smlehe2a.htm
On the March 11th, 2008 episode of my PsiOp-Radio show I talked about the incident... starts at about the 48-50 minute mark.
History of Judson Rocket Football
by Giles Babb
...
Rocket Band in 1978 Battle of Flowers Parade: About a block up the street Ira Attebury would carry out his rampage the following year. Reportedly, he had camped out at the same location, at the corner of Broadway and Grayson (Burgraf Tire), for a couple of Fiesta Week Parades leading up to 1979, which is another way of saying he was probably just up the road on this day as well. It's rather grim to think that maybe we'd been marching past him all that time, especially near where we'd line up for the Parade to begin with. That next year (my first at TAMU), the rest of my family would be further up the way---and close enough to the carnage without being too close----where they got some rather stark photos of the San Antonio Police in action, and hundreds of vacant seats and abandoned purses, ice chests; etc.
http://www.judsonrocketball.com/rocket_band-2.html
Black Friday: Bullets instead of flowers
Posted on 04/13/2010 by gdelaune
Time passes faster than a lightning flash. It doesn’t seem like it has been 31 years since a mentally disturbed man became a crazed gunman as he used an old RV as his arsenal and armed with 15 weapons and 3,000 rounds of ammunition, stepped to the doorway, placed his hand on the trigger of an automatic weapon and began spraying the crowd with projectiles of tragedy.
It was called “Black Friday,” and before the fusillade of bullets ended, two persons died and 52 others were wounded. However, the scene could have been a much larger killing field had not the sniper’s weapon jammed.
Sixty-four-year old Ira Attebury, a native of the Midwest who carried a grudge against the San Antonio Police Department, initially targeted the six officers who were assigned to the intersection of Broadway and Grayson. His aim was true enough to bring down the veteran lawmen. Fortunately, their wounds were serious and not fatal, but they carried the wounds with them for years and many were forced to retire because of them. Miraculously, they lived through the barrage.
As Attebury continued his rampage, one of his next volleys struck 26-year old Ida Long and 47-year old Mrs. Amelia Castillo, the mother of 13 children. The two women died instantly. Two of Mrs. Castillo’s children were wounded, but not critically.
The bloodbath became a scene of sheer pandemonium as hundreds of festive onlookers, waiting to see the historic Battle of Flowers parade, instead, were trapped in a bloody web of evil.
It brought to mind the infamous escapade at the University of Texas Tower some 13 years earlier when ex-Marine Charles Whitman unleashed his sniper savagery killing 15 victims on the UT campus.
The police radio came alive that Friday afternoon when the words, “officers down …. officers down at Broadway and Grayson” squawked across the air waves. All news operations monitor the police radios and when the alert was heard at KENS-TV, Ronnie Smith and I raced for the Channel 5 live-truck and Ronnie sped toward the scene, just a few blocks from the station which was located at Fourth and Avenue E.
Several news photographers were already in place at various parade route sites, so they were alerted when the police dispatcher relayed the shooting information. Cameraman Joe Flores and news reporter Margo Spitz were near the intersection and Flores began videoing immediately.
Smitty and I turned the corner on Grayson and headed toward Broadway … you could hear the sounds of gunfire and windshields on autos in the lot of San Antonio Motor Imports being blown out. As we approached the Burggraf Tire Company, we saw people running from the intersection like ants fleeing insect spray. Scattered chairs and debris were remnants of the gunman’s wrath. We pulled our live truck within 30 yards of the RV, unaware of the exact origin of the gunfire. All the police officers were down so no one was there to warn us off …. until someone said “Get back, get back. He’s in the RV”.
At that point, Smitty slammed the truck in reverse and backed to Grayson and Alamo. I jumped from the vehicle and crawled through a hole in a fence to be met by flying glass shards as Attebury’s bullets slammed into the car windows.
I sprinted back to the live truck, told Smitty to roll out the video cable and we stretched it almost to the Broadway/Grayson location and began our live reports as chaos continued.
Arriving police officers returned fire….a SWAT team member began firing tear gas canisters into the RV and volunteers, officers and Air Force personnel began pushing an Air Force bus into the intersection to provide cover for escaping spectators.
For more than two hours we continued our reports and I would seek a parade watcher or shooting witness for a live interview. Margo Spitz and Joe Flores joined up with Smitty and I to provide more footage and interviews.
While the horrible event was taking place, my wife Jo, 13-year-old daughter Andrea and 8-year old son Shannon were watching the parade at home. Suddenly, when Andrea saw my first television report, she began screaming to her Mom, “Daddy’s going to get shot! Daddy’s going to get shot!”
Jo was so shaken, she phoned Ray Dudley, assignments editor at KENS-TV and said to him: “Tell him to get the hell out of there.”
Looking back, it was rather dangerous as I was squatting in the middle of the street giving my reports. I’ll never forget a dazed young woman, blood flowing from a head wound, leaning against the bumper of a patrol car clutching a small boy to her bosom. That memorable moment was captured by an Express-News photographer and became the cover picture for Life Magazine.
Express-News file photo
T.J. Lapping is comforted by his aunt, Dianne Wick, while his mother, who was shot in the neck by Ira Attebury is treated nearby on April 27, 1979.
The young woman was Diane Wick, and the boy was her nephew, Tommy Lapping. She told me she heard shots, saw someone fall, turned to her sister and started to speak when her sibling was hit in the throat by an Attebury bullet, and then she too was wounded.
As a man swiftly crossed the street, I stopped him, asked him to kneel down with me and tell me what he had witnessed. Neal Merchant and his family were seated directly across the street from the RV’s door and he related he heard a shot, saw a police officer fall, then witnessed the opening of the RV’s door and smoke coming from a gun. Merchant continued that at least two little kids were hit.
He was angry at the gunman. “I was in Vietnam, and if I had a chance I’d go in there and kill the SOB.”
It could have been even worse and the figures could have been reversed. Rather than two dead and 52 wounded, the casualties might have been 52 dead and two wounded.
The wounded officers were identified as Lt. Gary Nagy, the first hit, He crawled to his nearby squad car. The other victims were Inspector Elroy Crenwelge, Lt. Robert Maldonado, Sgt. Ben Donahoe and Sgt. Tom Barker. They either crawled from the immediate vicinity or were aided by bystanders. The sixth cop wounded was Sgt. L.R. Grassmuck, who was hit in the leg and foot. Patrolman John Scott was injured when his motorcycle overturned as he sped toward the scene.
Chief of Police Emil Peters said Attebury apparently committed suicide after the tragic onslaught and the weapon he was using at the time malfunctioned. But he was also hit by a police officer’s shotgun blast as the patrolman crawled into the RV and saw the killer prone on the floor. The officer was identified as SWAT team member Sgt. Sidney Marsh. There was no doubt after both barrels were emptied that the parade butcher was dead.
As many as 100 police officers swarmed to the scene, cordoned off the area and cleared the streets. The entire episode was over and for the first time in its storied history, the Battle of Flowers parade was canceled. Officers using bullhorns told thousands who were downtown to go home — the parade was over.
Attebury had begun his killing spree immediately after the high school color guard had passed through the intersection…He might well have fired at the kids but apparently decided to direct his fury at the men in police uniforms.
It was a terrible day on that warm spring afternoon but my blood runs cold when I remember those horrifying moments when the man, known as a “loner” and paranoid about the police, claiming they were always watching him, became an instrument of the devil.
It was indeed Black Friday. And now, every year at Battle of Flowers time, I get goosebumps thinking about the battlefield-like conditions that occurred in April of 1979.
Let’s hope and pray it never happens again, in San Antonio or in any other city.
http://blog.mysanantonio.com/garydelaun ... f-flowers/
Ira Attebury
April 27, 1979 in San Antonio, Texas at the Battle of Flowers Parade.
There were 300,000 spectators present. Approximately 5,000 of them were forced to dive for cover.
His first targets were police officers.
He was shooting at anything that moved, and shouting "Traitors, traitors, traitors."
Ida Long, age 26 and Amalia Castillo, age 48 were killed. 50 others were injured, 30 from gunshot wounds, and 20 from the stampede.
He shot himself with a .38 caliber revolver behind his right ear.
He had 15 weapons, including a double barreled shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol, 9 rifles, and 4 .38 caliber revolvers.
He asked permission from the tire store to park his motor home in their parking lot.
He was extremely headstrong, and was frequently fighting with his father.
He had never been married.
He was in a car wreck, and after the car wreck he was disabled, and started imagining things that weren't quite true.
He was extremely paranoid and thought the police were poisoning his water.
He had been forced to leave the trailer park in which he was living because of his paranoid behavior.
http://www.angelfire.com/vamp2/kimmie_j69/ia.html
The Anatomy of Motive - John Douglas Mind Hunter.com - Research Center
...
Ira Attebury (San Antonio, Texas)
On April 27, 1979, sixty-four-year-old Attebury randomly fired shots from his motor home into a crowd of approximately five thousand people, who had gathered in anticipation of the start of the Fiesta Battle of Flowers parade. Two women died, and about fifty other people were injured. After a half an hour of gunfire, this mass murderer finally turned the gun on himself and died.
For more information about this case, including insight into what may have led up to the crime, please refer to pages 286-291 in The Anatomy of Motive.
http://www.johndouglasmindhunter.com/re ... natomy.php
Your Turn - Nov. 11 / Letters to the Editor
Published 03:06 p.m., Tuesday, November 10, 2009
...
Courage under fire
On April 26, 1979, my friend Sallie and I were comfortably settled at Broadway and Grayson Street to watch the Battle of Flowers Parade during Fiesta. Across the street, Ira Attebury, a drugged person in a camper, began to fire on people in the crowd.
As soon as we became aware that this was not pre-parade fireworks, we began to gather children sitting in front of us and hid behind small cars in the Motor Imports car lot behind us. We stayed hidden and scared for an hour.
At Fort Hood, someone opened fire on a gathering place there. There was no hiding in fear.
The troops and medics were not carrying firearms, but they went toward the gunfire. This is the U.S. military. Thanks be to God for every one of them.
Barbara A. Hayden
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/let ... 846894.php
Fiesta fun: Battle of Flowers highlights history, community
by Gary Cooper / KENS 5
Posted on April 23, 2010 at 12:28 AM
Updated Friday, Apr 23 at 12:38 PM
....
Evolution of the Parade
In the coming years, the parade evolved into a weeklong celebration with its own queen and royal court and became a must-attend event for South Texans.
Sometimes, outside events have put a halt to the Battle of Flowers. For instance, the parade was not held during the two world wars.
The progression and commemoration of Texas heroes still took place in those war years, Boone said, but “other resources were devoted to the war effort … so the parade was placed on hold for those times.”
The Battle of Flowers also was canceled in 1979 after a gunman opened fire on police and spectators prior to that year’s parade. Ira Attebury, who police say was fueled by drugs and a grudge against SAPD, killed three people and injured 52 others before officers shot him.
KENS 5 reporter Gary Delaune and photographer Ron “Smitty” Smith memorably brought images of the sniper scene to San Antonio television sets. Despite the tragic events of that day, the parade returned the next year and continues to serve as an annual cultural touchstone for San Antonians.
http://www.kens5.com/home/Fiesta-showca ... 31784.html
Brother refers to sniper as man out to kill people
By Frank Patrick - Express-News
Originally published on April 28, 1979.
Ira Attebury, grew up in the country, a hunter of rabbits and small game.
But his mind twisted tragically in recent years, and the huntsman sought human quarry instead.
That was the conclusion reached by a man who knew him well, Attebury's brother Roy, 59.
Roy Attebury, contacted in Naylor, Mo., by the Express-News shortly after he learned of Friday's San Antonio sniping tragedy, said he had noticed a bizarre change in his brother in the past couple of years.
"He felt the police were following him all the time," Attebury said.
Attebury said he felt his brother had gone off the deep end and set out to kill people. He said he did not think his brother would ever kill himself.
"No way. I don't think so," he said.
According to Attebury, his brother's fixation about the police seemed deep-rooted. "But it was all in his imagination," he said.
Attebury said his dead brother had visited Naylor, a town of about 600 nestled in the hills in the southeastern part of the state near the Arkansas border, last fall. He visited every six months or so, the relatives said, to see a physician about a heart condition.
"He couldn't do anything," Attebury said, when quizzed about the heart condition.
Ira Attebury was a former independent trucker who never married. His brother said he was drawing disability checks. He said he did not think Attebury had worked regularly for several years.
Roy Attebury said he and his brother were part of a large family of seven boys and two girls. He said Ira used to hunt in the wild terrain near Naylor. "But that's all bulldozed now," he said.
His brother was not a gentle man, but not too rough, Attebury said.
Ira Attebury reportedly served in the coast guard during World War II. His brother indicated that, besides the routine hunting experiences, he was not aware of any particular training Ira Attebury might have had in firearms.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/specia ... eople.html
Survivors recall Fiesta terror | WOPULAR
http://www.wopular.com/survivors-recall-fiesta-terror
Apr 25, 2009 – Ira Attebury killed two people and injured at least 50 at the 1979 Battle of Flowers Parade.Terror RememberedmySA History: Fiesta sniper ...
Fiesta celebrates the city's spirit
By Roy Bragg / rbragg@express-news.net
Updated 01:37 a.m., Sunday, April 10, 2011
...
In 1979, tragedy took center stage when gunman Ira Attebury barricaded himself in a recreational vehicle and opened fire on the crowd gathered to watch the Battle of Flowers Parade.
He killed two spectators and wounded six police officers. At least 50 others, including 13 children, were injured. He eventually shot himself to death.
...
http://www.mysanantonio.com/fiesta/arti ... 330338.php
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Apr 28, 1979 – http://media.mysanantonio.com/images/Sniper1.jpg ... opened fire on a festive crowd gathered Friday to watch the Battle of Flowers Parade, ... The gunman, tentatively identified late Friday as Ira Attebury, 64, ...
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Bloody 'battle of flowers' [Articles] Page 2, REUTER
Bloody 'battle of flowers' SAN ANTONIO (Texas), Sat. A gunman killed two people and wounded 32 when be sprayed automatic rifle fire into a packet crowd during San Antonio's "Bat tie of the Flowers" festival. Police identified the gunmar as Ira Attebury, 61, but said the] had no idea why... (63 words)
http://newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Issue ... 90429.aspx
