‘Fiesta sniper’ unleashed terror 45 years ago

Steve Garcia still gets emotional when he talks about the 30 terrifying minutes of chaos and gunfire that claimed two lives, left dozens injured and forced the cancellation of the venerable Battle of Flowers Parade 45 years ago.

Waiting to step off with the MacArthur High School marching band, Garcia was under a highway bridge near the front of the parade when he started hearing loud popping sounds. The noise — and the sight of gunshot victims falling to the pavement — was already sending panicked spectators running for cover blocks away.

Today, the location just off Broadway is a small, recently completed pocket park with landscaping, a bike rack, tables, chairs and a few other amenities surrounded by newish apartment and office buildings just east of the trendy Pearl area.

But what it looked like on Friday, April 27, 1979, is seared in Garcia’s memory. It wasn’t until he watched the television news that night with his family that he began to process his feelings.

“I just started bawling, and I couldn’t stop for two days,” he said.

San Antonians old enough to remember it still refer to the gunman as “the Fiesta sniper.”

In an era before mass shootings became a too-common ingredient of the news cycle, shocked observers could only compare the random violence at Fiesta to the 1966 shooting at the University of Texas at Austin that killed 17 people and wounded 30. The San Antonio tragedy might have been worse, if not for the survival instincts of those in the crowd, the fast action of police and first responders — and a little luck.

The parade had been underway for a few minutes on a typically hot, sunny late April day when the gunshots were reported at 1:08 p.m. Some 5,000 of the estimated 200,000 people on the route bolted, scurrying for safety.

Witnesses said they heard a man in a recreational vehicle shout, “Traitors, traitors, traitors!” right before the shooting began.

It was Ira Attebury, a 64-year-old World War II veteran who had parked his green-and-cream-colored Winnebago by a tire shop at the southwest corner of Broadway and Grayson Street. He blasted at police with a shotgun, then picked up a semiautomatic rifle and fired repeatedly, seemingly at anyone who moved, including children.

The South San Antonio ISD West Campus High School band, the parade’s first, had started down Broadway. The bands from East Central and MacArthur high schools were next. Garcia, now 62, was a junior in MacArthur’s trumpet section.

“We had just finished tuning up, and we were excited, getting ready to go. The first thing I heard wasn’t startling because it sounded like firecrackers,” he recalled. “All of a sudden, we saw people running around the corner back in our direction.”

“We started seeing everybody run, so we started running, too,” Garcia said. “We saw people throwing their instruments down and running. That was the part that was really shocking. We were taught to respect our instruments.”

David McLemore, a San Antonio Express-News reporter, had just returned from lunch with his wife, who also worked at the paper. They’d been married six days earlier.

Suddenly, he became the lead writer on a breaking front-page story when the newspaper’s police scanners picked up radio transmissions about a “sniper” at the start of the parade. McLemore grabbed a notebook and raced there in a weathered blue Volkswagen Beetle.

Witnesses said the initial sequence of gunfire lasted about 30 seconds, before responding police turned it into a standoff and siege punctuated by occasional shooting.

When he arrived, “people were in full-bore panic, and I could hear gunshots,” recalled McLemore, now 77 and retired.

Two police officers were helping a man and his young son get to safety. Seeing the father losing his grip, McLemore ran up to catch the weeping boy, then knelt behind a telephone pole, realizing he was “maybe a little too close to the action.”

He moved back into the anxious crowd and started working with Express-News photographer Steve Campbell, interviewing survivors. One of them was Dianne Wick, whose sister suffered a gunshot wound to the throat but survived. Though clipped by a bullet herself, Wick comforted her 9-year-old nephew.

Campbell’s photo of Wick holding the boy — “her eyes glazed with shock,” McLemore said — became an iconic image of the tragic event.

Police set up a command post a block north of Grayson and positioned emergency vehicles near the Winnebago to shield the crowds. They fired several rounds of bullets and tear gas through the roof of the RV from atop the tire shop.

“I took a moment to look back toward the RV and saw police maneuver toward the door and enter. I heard multiple gunshots, and then it was over,” McLemore said.

As the siege unfolded, Garcia and other MacArthur band members hid behind cars or buses. They later noticed a “really odd odor,” like burning plastic — the tear gas — scratching their throats and making them cough. As things got calmer, they were told to head back to their school buses. The daytime street parade, a time-honored event dating to 1891 that gradually became the citywide celebration now known as Fiesta, was canceled.

“Everyone was in stunned silence” as they walked back, Garcia said.

Back at school, the teens were reprimanded by band directors.

“We were actually being scolded for throwing down our instruments and not acting professionally. I thought that was a little odd, that we just went through this and that was their concern at the time,” Garcia said.

The shooting took the life of Ida Jean Dollard, 27, who was at the parade with her brother, 10, and daughter, 7. She also was survived by a 5-month-old son.

Amelia Castillo, 47, a widow and mother of 13 children, also was killed. She was attending beauty school and learning to drive to support her family. Three of her children and one grandchild were among those wounded or hurt in falls or accidents. Castillo prayed with her children before she died at the scene, one of her daughters told the Express-News in 1999.

Fifty-one people were taken to hospitals, including five police officers and 12 others with serious gunshot wounds. Others were less severely wounded or injured in the melee. Castillo’s 14-year-old daughter was burned when a gas tank was hit by a bullet and ruptured.

Attebury was found dead inside the RV. His rifle had jammed. A medical examiner ruled he had used a handgun to take his own life, though some officers at the scene that day believe he might have been mortally wounded by police gunfire. More than a dozen other firearms and a stash of ammunition were in the RV.

Attebury had a history of mental illness, afflicted by schizophrenia and paranoid delusions. Traces of the drug PCP were found in his blood.

By the time Garcia’s father picked him up at MacArthur, details of the shooting were filtering out on radio and television and the extent of the horror had become clear.

“When I got home later that evening, my mom and sisters were just bawling as I walked in the door. I’m getting choked up again, thinking about that,” he said.