Note: I did a quick scan and OCR of Acount of the May 17, 1974 Los Angeles shootout with the SLA. I will try to twek it when I get time. This is a permanent link.
May 17, 1974 SLA Shoot-out
IT was a small stucco house, one of many similar homes built during the 1940s. The neighborhood had once been all white. It is now almost entirely black. Possibly what drew the SLA's attention to 1466 was the fact that at that early hour all the lights were on. They may also have taken note of the four-foot-high stone fence running across the front of the property. A natural shield, should one be needed.
Inside the house were six people: four adults and two sleeping children. Christine Johnson, thirty-five, and Minnie Lewis, thirty-two, lived there. John Smith* and seventeen-year-old Brenda Daniels were visitors. They had dropped in, separately, the evening before "to play dominoes and drink a little wine," Brenda said. They had all done a lot of drinking by the time the SLA arrived on East Fifty-fourth Street. The four were in the front room listening to the radio when someone knocked on the door.
What occurred inside 1466 during the next thirteen hours is constructed from interviews by the authors, other reporters, and LAPD and FBI investigators of the nearly twenty persons who spent varying lengths of time in the house while the SLA was there. Some of these people have given conflicting stories, chang-ing their accounts from interview to interview. The version that follows seems closest to what happened.
Christine and Minnie answered the knock. A handsome black man was on the porch. He spoke in a soft, self-assured voice.
"I saw your lights, sisters. My name is Cinque. I need your help."
*The name John Smith is a pseudonym. He is the one person inside 1466 that day interviewed only by the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD has refused to identify him other than as John Smith.
Stepping inside, DeFreeze told the women he and "some friends ......white friends" were being pursued by the police, that they needed a place to stay "for a few hours." At first the women hesitated. Minnie recalled having heard the name Cinque, but wasn't sure just why it stuck in her mind. DeFreeze offered them $100 and promised there would be "no trouble." The women had a whispered conversation, then told Cinque he and his friends could stay "for a little while." The $100 changed hands.
DeFreeze asked John Smith if he would help bring "a few things" into the house. The two went outside, where the rest of the SLA group was waiting. Smith remembers it took a good twenty minutes to unload the vans, for besides suitcases, a foot-locker, sleeping bags, and cardboard cartons filled with documents, the Symbionese Liberation Army carried inside enough weapons to outfit an infantry platoon.
In all, nineteen rifles, shotguns, and pistols and well over 4,000 rounds of ammunition for those weaponswere transferred from the vans to the house. DeFreeze chose the kitchen to store the arsenal. It included:
Four M-1 .30-caliber carbines. All had been "converted" capable of being fired only as fully automatic weapons, as machine guns.
A Browning semiautomatic rifle (Sports Model), .30-06 cali-ber.
A Remington semiautomatic rifle, .244 caliber.
Seven sawed-off 12-gauge shotguns (manufacturers included Mossberg, Ithaca, and Winchester).
Two Mauser HSc double-action automatic pistols, .38 auto! 9-mm caliber.
A Colt .45 automatic pistol (the military model).
Two .38-caliber revolvers; one a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed Chief's Special (DeFreeze's personal sidearm), the other a blue-steeled Rossi with a three-inch barrel the gun Oakland police say Russ Little bought, one of the guns that killed Marcus Foster.
The ammo, some in bandoliers, the bulk in boxes stacked neatly on the floor, included a few rounds that were the SLA's terror trademark cyanide bullets.
The unloading completed, DeFreeze turned his attention to security. The vans had to be hidden. Smith said he knew just the spot, off the street, behind a two-story apartment house, empty because it was fire-gutted and condemned. And it was only a block away. The General Field Marshal inspected the location. Then he
They walked around the block, back to the hundred-dollar safe house on Fifty-fourth. It was nearing 6 A.M.
DeFreeze introduced his companions as "soldiers of the SLA," then the six conferred among themselves for a while, much of the time loud enough for their uneasy hosts to overhear. They needed a place to lie low in for a couple of weeks, a place close by. Minnie Lewis quickly suggested a vacant house around the corner on Compton Avenue. Smith Led Cinque to the address. It looked okay. DeFreeze made plans to contact the landlord.
Back inside 1466, Christine, Minnie, and Brenda were starting to worry. The SLA soldiers were all packing pistols. There were more guns in the kitchen. And boxes and boxes of bullets. Christine and Brenda had seen one of the white girls (believed to be Nancy Ling Perry) fill several bottles with gasoline. The three huddled in the kitchen and talked of their fears while they washed down what they later described as "nerve pills" with the last of a bottle of wine
.
A car pulled up in front of 1466 and honked. It was Smith's boss and a co-worker. He went outside and told them to go on without him. The SLA, explained John Smith, was staying in Minnie Lewis' place and he had a chance to make himself a few bucks, "helping Cinque."
About 7 o' clock DeFreeze asked Brenda if she would go to the store. He gave the girl a twenty-dollar bill, and she walked two blocks to a grocery, returning with beer, bread, cold cuts, and, for DeFreeze, two packs of Camels. Camilla Hall took charge of making sandwiches. Brenda remembers her well. "She was acting like she was the woman of the house."
Minnie Lewis was growing more concerned. Her children were awake and hungry. She gave the two of them sandwiches, sent them off to school, popped another nerve pill, drank a beer, and went to her bedroom for a nap. Her three other children were not there; they lived with their grandmother, Mary Carr, a couple of blocks away. Christine, too, took another pill, a beer, and a nap.
The SLA stayed on alert during the morning hours. DeFreeze and Willie Wolfe traded off half-hour shifts watching the street out the front windows. The four women soldiers took their turns at sentry duty and talked among themselves or with Brenda. Occasionally one would catnap on the wooden floor. There was no need for covers. It was already in the eighties, a beautiful blue-sky smogless day, fast becoming an LA scorcher.
There were two radios and a TV in the house. But apparently the SLA never learned of the 9 A.M. raid on their abandoned West Eighty-fourth Street hideout.
At 9:30 A.M. or thereabouts, DeFreeze asked Smith if he would go out and buy a cheap van or station wagon for the group. The vans hidden on Fifty-third might be hot. A few minutes later Smith departed with $500 handed him by DeFreeze. He went to a pay phone and called around to friends asking to "borrow" a car. He offered up to $40 for the use of one for a day or so. No luck not even when he explained it was for Cinque and the SLA. He came back with the bad news, said he would try again later, and had a beer.
On West Eighty-fourth Street the LAPD was trying to pick up the SLA's trail. Neighbors around the raided cottage showed no hesitancy in telling what they knew about the strangers who had lived on their street for a week. Kenny Johnson, seventeen, said he had chatted with two of the girls on their front lawn while they sat "smoking a reefer." He and others remembered the various vans, and their several descriptions jibed. A locate-but-take-no-action bulletin was broadcast.
During the late morning several people dropped in at 1466. The SLA made no secret as to its identity; in fact, a few visitors that day say they were given recruitment pitches. One girl asked Cinque what he was doing in LA. DeFreeze took time from handing out carbines and bullets to the others to explain their mission. The SLA had come to Los Angeles to "start a revolution" and "get the police," the girl later told LAPD investigators. No one stayed long. Once outside, each hurried to spread the word: The SLA was right there on Fifty-fourth. By 11:30 it was being talked about over backyard fences and at Sam the Burger Pusher's food stand two blocks away.
Sixty-three-year-old James Reed stopped by about noon with some fresh-picked collard greens for Christine. He found her sitting on the edge of her bed. Reed thought she looked "pretty sick." Suddenly he noticed two white girls, wearing guns. They smiled cordially at him and said "hi" as he hurriedly exited.
At 12:20 P.M. two Metro Squad cops SWAT team members back on regular duty following the West Eighty-fourth Street raid decided to check out the rear of 1451 East Fifty-third. It was a regular stop for them, a routine check of a well-known drop spot for stolen-and-stripped cars. The officers knew as soon as they spotted the blue one with the bashed-in front that they had stumbled on the SLA vans. The discovery of the vans targeted the neighborhood. Black officers in civilian clothing were sent into the area. Gang kids quickly pegged them as cops and passed the word.
The Man was around.
A teenage girla friend of Brenda's dropped in at 1466 a lit-tle after 1 o'clock. John Smith was on his way out again with Cinque's $500 in search of a vehicle. He never returned. By that time the LAPD and FBI were gearing for a 3 P.M. strategy session at Newton Street Station to plot out Operation SLA. They were working from the assumption that the Symbionese Liberation Army was somewhere close by those vans. Reporters picked up on the rumors, checked their best sources, and the media began making their way to Compton Avenue "around Fifty-third."
At 2 P.M. a female voice telephoned the FBI and said she had seen the SLA. She mistakenly gave the hideout address as 1462 East Fifty-fourth (next door to 1466). An hour later another anonymous woman caller told the LA police operator she had just seen "two white girls" sneaking through backyards into the rear of a house at 5311 South Compton. Three addresses now had to be checked out.
By 3:30 P.M. the SLA must have been aware that they had been cornered. Even from inside the house DeFreeze had somehow sensed the presence of cops. A young black girl recalls him asking why so many "pigs" were in the neighborhood. He did not seem satisfied with her explanation that it was probably just another dope raid or the LAPD hassling one of the area's several youth gangs. At one point, said the girl, DeFreeze told one of the white women, "Trish, we got to get out of here, it's getting too hot." The woman replied, "Why? It's hot everywhere." If the girl heard the name correctly, then it was to ZoyaMizmoon (Patricia) Soltysik that DeFreeze addressed the remark. DeFreeze also told a black man, Clarence Ross, who had wandered in early in the afternoon, "The station wagon should be here by now."
Shortly before 3 Minnie's children began arriving at 1466 from nearby schools. Minnie was passed out on her bed when eleven-year-old Timmy came home. He walked into a houseful of strangers. Rifles and ammo boxes were stacked around the living room, and the SLA women were then loading cartons of car-tridges into backpacks.
"Who are you?" Timmy demanded. "We're your mama's friends," DeFreeze replied. "No,
you're not. 1 know all my mama's
iiiczius, salu limmy. uerreeze toM the youngster to ~ clown." Suddenly Timmy
recognized the man. "Are you Donald DeFreeze?" he asked. Cinque said, "No." Timmy dashed out the back door a few minutes later. He saw the elderly James Reed and told him what had just happened. "I'm afraid," the boy said. Reed told him, "Go fetch your grandma."
Two more Lewis youngsters arrived at the house. They told LAPD investigators afterward they had seen Brenda and Christine fighting in a bedroom and that a "white lady" had pulled them apart. Brenda says one of the SLA women asked her to join up, that they "liked the way" she fought.
At Newton Street Station the LAPD and FBI traded intelligence and planned for the soon-to-start SLA sweep. It would be another task for SWAT but this time it would be the Los Angeles police SWAT team and LAPD made it clear to the FBI that they were going to be running the show. Plans were set out: Only a small number of officers would be directly involved in any confronta-tion with the SLA. Many more would be needed to "secure the perimeter"three square blocks control the anticipated crowds, and divert and direct traffic. The Los Angeles SWAT officers suited up and reported to a field command post set up near the target area.
Around 4 P.M. Mary Carr stormed into 1466. A glance told her Timmy's tale about Cinque and the SLA had been true. "Where's Minnie?" the fifty-two-year-old grandmother demanded. Brenda pointed to the bedroom. Mrs. Carr found her daughter passed out on the bed. Christine was awake but in an alcoholic daze. "Is everybody here drunk?" Mrs. Carr asked. Brenda took her aside and whispered that there were two white women in the other bedroom, that they had "bombs" in there with them. Mary Carr exploded, strode into the kitchen, and confronted DeFreeze.
She told him to get himself and the SLA "out of this place, right now!" DeFreeze said something to her about "black people sticking together." Mrs. Carr did not reply. Rounding up two of her grandchildren, she left unaware that eight-year-old Tony was still inside. She took the youngsters to her place, fixed them a bite to eat, and, with Timmy along to back up what she had to say, went out in search of "an officer."
A little before 5 P.M. Brenda went to the grocery again with another of DeFreeze's twenties. He wanted two more packs of Camels. On her way back a policeman stopped Brenda. Nobody was being allowed past the perimeter lines.
Minnie Lewis left house to "go see a friend". She did not come back.
Clarence Ross and young Tony were in the living room. Tony was watching cartoons on TV; Clarence was drinking from a pint bottle of whiskey.
DeFreeze spent some time in the kitchen talking with another eighteen-year-old black girl, who had come over to "see the SLA." She says he told her he was aware police were in the area, that there was probably going to be a shoot-out, and that he was prepared to die. But, he told her, "We're going to take a lot of motherfucking pigs with us." She also told LAPD investigators DeFreeze was drinking from a jug of Boone's Farm wine during their conversation, but that he appeared in the stiff words of the police report"sober and in full control of his faculties."
The girl said Christine stumbled into the kitchen and started to say something. Before any words came out, however, Christine passed out, fell to the floor, and began snoring. DeFreeze lifted her gently and carried the woman to her bedroom. The neighbor went home shortly before 5:30.
At 4 o'clock the command post, set up in the offices of a tow-truck business a few blocks from East Fifty-fourth Street, had gone into operation. An LAPD "tactical alert" was called. That allowed the field commander of Operation SLA to order in cops from throughout the city, as many officers as he needed. SWAT teams One and Two, eighteen policemen under the command of an officer in charge (OIC), reported for duty shortly before 4:30. At 4:20 perimeter boundaries had been established. Eventually 218 LAPD cops and 127 FBI agents would be handling the task of traffic and crowd control.
Until Mary Carr pinpointed her daughter's home as the sanctuary the SLA had chosen, the LAPD had had three other suspected hideouts under surveillance. Although it was decided that attempts would be made to evacuate homes near all four suspect dwellings, the LAPD ruled out a mass evacuation of the area as being too dangerous. If the SLA soldiers caught on to what was happening, they might try a breakout in the midst of an evacuation effort.
The LAPD says it evacuated "a number of residents" prior to the start of the shoot-out, but that "others refused" to leave their homes; in one instance, police reported, occupants of a house called the officers trying to talk them into leaving "motherfuckers." Most residents of the area and community leaders as well contend that little or no effort was made to get people to safety. At a little after 5 o'clock the LAPD had targeted 1466 East Fifty-fourth as the house where the SLA was staying. Final attack plans were mapped.
At 5:40 SWAT officers were in position, armed with semiautomatic carbines, sniper rifles, shotguns, tear-gas launchers, and personal sidearms. Team One was at the front of 1466, Team Two at the rear.
(Thirty-two miles to the southeast, in a motel room across the Street from Disneyland, Bill Harris had just clicked on a TV set, switching channels until he found one broadcasting live from the East Fifty-fourth Street scene. Checking in at the Anaheim motel [Emily had spent a college summer working at Disneyland and knew the area well], Harris had overheard someone talking about the SLA, about a house being surrounded by police, that it was on television.*)
"Ready to give the surrender announcement," radioed Team One leader. "Go!" ordered the OIC. It was 5:44.
"Occupants of fourteen-sixty-six East Fifty-fourth Street, this is the Los Angeles Police Department speaking. Come out with your hands up. Comply immediately and you will not be harmed," Team One leader commanded by bullhorn. A few seconds' pause. He repeated the message. Behind the house, some seventy feet away, Team Two leader reported he had heard the broadcasts clearly. There was no response from inside. A minute went by. Team One leader spoke again: "People in the yellow frame house with the stone porch, address fourteen-sixty-six East Fifty-fourth Street, this is the Los Angeles Police Department speaking. Come out with your hands up. Comply im-mediately and you will not be harmed. "Another minute went by.
"The front door . . . somebody's coming out," Team One leader reported suddenly.
A tiny form came through the doorway. It was Tony. He had heard the bullhorn over the noise of the TV cartoons. He had not understood the words. Tony had come out to see what was going on. He walked down the steps, started toward the sidewalk and froze. All around him were gas-masked figures with guns. "Come this way, over here," Team One leader called. Tony just stood there. Team One leader darted into the open and scooped up the eight-year-old. Tony was crying, screaming, "Mama, Mama." An officer carried him to the corner. Detectives began questioning
*From accounts of Patricia Hearst and EiIl and Emily Harris given after their capture.
him about who was in the house, whether they had guns. It was several minutes before Tony stopped sobbing long enough to give answers.
Two more surrender announcements. Another figure appeared in the doorway. It was Clarence Ross. He had understood the order. Ross walked out, hands clasped behind head, onto the sidewalk. He balked when Team One leader yelled, "Come this way, slowly." The SWAT officer again exposed himself. He dashed out, collared Ross, dragged him to the corner. Questions were fired at the man. Was the SLA in the house? Was DeFreeze? Were the white women inside 1466? What weapons had he seen? Ross shrugged. He had seen a black lady inside, but no one calling himself DeFreeze or any white women or any guns. He stuck to that story.
Young Tony, however, had given the LAPD a good idea of what it was up against. SWAT knew it was facing at least five, possibly eight, heavily armed soldiers of the SLA. The SWAT OIC decided a quick move had to be made if appeals for surrender failed. He was concerned about the approaching nightfall an escape attempt by the SLA under cover of darkness would be a likely move; that would greatly increase the chances of people; cops and civiliansgetting killed or wounded. There was even the pos-sibility the SLA might try to escape by "tunneling" to another dwelling, the OIC noted later in his report.
Unnoted in any report, but certainly a consideration, was the fact that with night falling, police might have to deal with "hos-tiles" both in front and behind them. In the Los Angeles ghetto perhaps in any black ghettopolice are on a limited visa. Crowds could gatherperhaps angry crowdsduring a police siege of radicals led by a black man. The LAPD had previously had nasty experiences in such situations. The SWAT officer in charge decided to move in. Tear gas would be the next approach; he radioed his intention to the command post.
Team One leader continued bullhorning surrender commands. in the nine-minute period between the first broadcast and the firing of the first gas canister, "a minimum of 18 separate surren-der announcements were made," the official LAPD report of the events of May 17 states.* (Eleven more surrender appeals were made during the shoot-out.)
*Although one of the authors watched from a half block away, much of the detail in this report necessarily relies on the official police account. Several news-men were right at the scene, however, and verify numerous surrender demands
As calls for surrender continued, SWAT officers on both sides of 1466 reported hearing movement inside, sounds like furniture being pushed across the floor, sounds of people shouting to one another. There was no indication there would be a surrender. The LAPD, latecomers to the drama, did not know the SLA code forbade the act. The eighteenth appeal went ignored. At 5:53 the OIC signaled Team One leader.
A front window shattered as two Flite-rite rockets whooshed through it into the house and exploded into white clouds of eye-searing, throat-choking CS tear gas.
A burst of machine-gun fire from the house was the SLA's re-sponse to the tear gas. The automatic M-1 sprayed .30-caliber bul-lets into an apartment house directly across the street. SWAT officers instantly answered with their semiautomatics. The battle was joined.
For the next few minutes firing from both sides was intense, al-most continuous. The cops and the SLA stopped shooting only when emptied guns forced them to reload. The gunfire drowned out the screams of other residents on the street who suddenly found themselves in the middle of a firefight. Weapons were firing out of 1466 from several windows, hitting all over the place, ricocheting off the street, off buildings, miraculously neither kill-ing nor wounding anyone. Police bullets drilled into the house. (An additional eighteen men from the SWAT reserve were de-ployed to reinforce the two SWAT fire teams around the house.)
The FBI, miffed at being kept on the sidelines serving as traffic cops, saw a chance to get into the act after the battle had raged for twenty minutes. When the LAPD ran short of tear gas (some 100 canisters of CS and CN gas were lobbed into 1466 during the gunfight), the FBI asked if its own SWAT team could lend a hand. Approval was given, reluctantly. Seven agents spent the next half hour shooting tear gas (sixteen canisters) and bullets (sixty rounds) at the house from a spot across and down the street. The LAPD finally told the FBI no further help was needed.
6:30 P.M.: Heavy firing from the house still continued. Team One leader climbed to the roof of 1468 and crawled to the edge overlooking 1466. He took aim with a gas launcher at a side window and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
by police bullhorn. The authors went to great lengths to verify details; even to the point of synchronizing various taped news reports and police radio calls against a beeping time-tape to pinpoint time to ten-second intervals, searching for material discrepancies in the official account.
The weapon had misfired. He loaded another Flite-rite into the gas gun, raised himself up, and leaned over. An SLA automatic weapon fired at him. The slugs hit low, raking the stucco wall just below the roof line. The officer threw himself backward onto the rooftop and lay there for several seconds. A thousand feet above, a police heli-copter radioed that a "possible wounded officer" was atop 1468. Team One leader was not hurt, however. He jumped to the ground, leaned around a corner, and fired yet another rocket of tear gas into 1466.
Three SWAT officers smashed through a window of 1468 at 6:35 and climbed into what they supposed would be an empty building. They found three black women huddled on the floor. The interior walls of 1468 were pockmarked with bullet holes. The officers immediately began evacuating the women, lifting them through a window. It was Mattie Morrison's house, and as the fifty-eight-year-old woman was being handed through, she begged the policemen, "Don't leave my dogs behind." She said af-terward the cops had told her they did not have time "to go around saving animals." Mattie Morrison's three pets"they was my family"died in the fast-spreading fire that erupted in the SLA's fortress a few minutes later.
It will never be determined just how the fire started. The SLA had a two-gallon can of gasoline inside 1466, carried in with the weapons and ammunition. Christine and Brenda both say they watched an SLA woman fill bottles with gasoline from that can. If Molotov cocktails were in 1466, one could have burst into flame on being hit by an exploding tear-gas canister.
At 6:40 a Team Two SWAT man tossed a couple of Federal 555 riot-gas canisters into a window on the east side of 1466. A minute later black smoke could be seen pouring out windows at the rear of the house. Within another minute flames started shooting up through the roof. Team One leader radioed, "Cease-fire," and called into the burning building with the bullhorn, "Come on out. The house is on fire. You will not be harmed." There was no re-sponse. He ordered "breathing apparatus" readied for expected "smoke-inhalation victims."
In less than four minutes the whole of the rear of the house was aflame and fire was spreading throughout the small structure. There had been no response to the latest surrender appeal. A TV reporter theorized live to the nation that probably all in the house were dead or dying. Just then Christine Johnson burst through the doorway. and stumbled down the concrete-block steps. She was screaming, hysterical.
Christine, apparently only slightly less intoxicated than terrified, lurched onto the sidewalk. A SWAT officer ran out, grabbed the woman, and began pulling her toward the corner. Christine lost balance, fell, and was dragged on her stomach the rest of the distance to the intersection. As she was being handcuffed, Christine started yelling, "They held me, they held me," at intelligence officers bellowing questions at her. (The LAPD report decribes Christine as being "hysterical and hyperac-tive" at that point, the reason they cite for why an officer "placed his foot firmly but lightly on her back to stop her voluntary and in-voluntary movement.") It was not until after she had been cuffed, searched, and put in a cruiser that the cops discovered Christine had been woundednot seriouslyby a shotgun blast and had sustained minor burns in the blazing house. She was treatedand arrestedat the University of Southern California hospital prisoners' ward. (The felony charge of harboring fugitives was later dropped.)
Christine explained later where she had been during the hour she spent in the midst of the fierce shooting. Oblivious to the siege, asleep across her bed, she had been totally unaware of the battle until the bed caught fire.
At about the time Christine emerged from the burning house, a patrol car was arriving on the scene with four automatic weapons from the LAPD's special-equipment arsenal. Two M-16sthe gun mass-produced for Vietnamwent to Team One; Team Two got the pair of 9-mm Schmeissers. Bursts of machine-gun fire were still coming from 1466.
There was a lull in the gunfire at 6:47. Team One leader broad-cast the final surrender call: "Come out, you will not be harmed. The house is on fire. It's all over. Throw your guns out the window. You will not be harmed."
An SLA soldier answered with an M- 1.
Three minutes later the SLA's bunker was a sea of orange flame out of which a coal-black pillar of smoke rose a hundred feet or so and then, bent by the wind, drifted northeast across Los Angeles. The SLA guns were still firing.
No longer able to withstand the flames and smoke within the house itself, the SLA chopped a hole through the floor and sought shelter in the eighteen-inch-high crawl space beneath. The Symbionese M-ls were now being fired out narrow air vents in the
foundation. Suddenly Team Two leader shouted excitedly into his radio: "We've got one down under the house . . . came out . . . went back in . . . possibly hit . . . still firing."
Fahizah and Gabi had taken the fight to the enemy. Nancy Ling Perry, clad in combat fatigues, hunting knife sheathed on web belt, gas mask discarded, came out of a crawl hole in the founda-tion at the rear of the house. Russ Little's .38 Rossi was in her hand. She began crawling toward the house next door. Team Two, the LAPD report says, held its fire.
Fahizah was several feet out when Camilla Hall emerged through the crawl hole firing an automatic pistol ("toward mem-bers of SWAT Team Two," states the LAPD report). The SWAT officers opened up on her with several weapons. One slug hit herin the center of the foreheadand killed her instantly. A comrade grabbed the ankles of the lifeless Gabi and pulled the body back inside. Machine-gun fire from the crawl hole resumed.
Fahizah had not come out to surrender, according to the official account, which was corroborated by monitored police-radio in-stant reports. (The incident was one of the few apparently not witnessed by one of the newsmen who crowded in on what one television anchorman called "the greatest domestic firefight in the history of television news coverage.") The official police reporta blue-bound, mass-printed 138-page book entitled The Symbionese Liberation Army in Los Angelesdescribes the death of Fahizah, the only SLA soldier to escape from the building:
Nancy Ling Perry then turned to her right and fired a revolver toward members of SWAT Team Two. Members of Team Two returned weapon fire toward the crawl hole and Nancy Ling Per-ry. She fell to the ground approximately ten feet from the crawl hole. .
The autopsy report states that Nancy Ling Perry was killed by "two gunshot wounds to the back, one severing the spinal cord and the other penetrating the right lung."
It was almost over. For a minute or so longer one soldier of the SLA continued firing out the crawl hole. Team Two blazed away at the opening with automatic weapons. Then the last gun of the SLA fell silent. (In all, some 9,000 shots had been fired by both sides; again, according to the police report.) The final cease-fire command was given at 6:58 P.M. as the walls and roof of the house collapsed. Four minutes later LA firemen began pumping streams of water into 1466 and three adjacent homes, which were also ablaze. They stood back a safe distance. Ammunition and pipe bombs were still exploding. (Fire apparatus had been standing by since the beginning of the siege, but when the blaze broke out, the battalion chief on the scene declared that his firemen could not safely position their hoses with shots still coming from the house. It was, in the official slang, a "let-burn situation.")
The bodies of DeFreeze, Soltysik, and Wolfe were found close together in the right rear corner of the crawl space beneath the structural floor. Nancy Ling Perry's body, just outside the build-ing, had been buried beneath the falling wall. Angela DeAngelis Atwood died just inside the crawl-space portal from which Ling and Camilla Hall had rushed. CamillaGabiwho had been fa-tally shot as she stepped out and then dragged back into the crawl space by her comrades, was buried deep under the charred de-bris. Her body was not found initially, resulting in a mistaken body count. Five bodies were removed that nightall badly burned and crushed, gas masks melted on their faces. Camilla was found two days later as investigators continued to sift through the charred rubble.
With white nylon cords, police and coroner's investigators charted out the ruins into fifteen square grids, double-sifting de-bris, collecting evidence, charting the location of everything found. Police even collected all shell casings and identified the guns that had fired them by the firing-pin impressions. (Los An-geles Police Chief Davis later had some of the big double-aught shotgun shells found in the search encased in Plexiglas cubes. He distributed them as mementos to reporters who had covered the shoot-out.)
No police officers, FBI agents, or bystanders were hit by SLA bullets, although the houses all around 1466 East Fifty-fourth bore evidence of the heavy outgoing fire from the house. Five po-lice officers sustained injuries related to the incident. One police officer strained his back carrying a heavy wooden case of gas pro-jectiles; another strained his lower back and right shoulder evac-uating citizens from nearby houses; and three others were injured working "perimeter crowd control"one hit by a thrown brick, one injuring his arm making an arrest, the third pulling a leg muscle in another arrest. Thirty-five persons filed a total of $150,000 in damage claims against the city for damage done to cars and buildings by bullets and fire.
(my comment: figure 350% inflation from 1974 to 2001)
According to the official police report on the siege, only twenty-nine of the thirty-seven SWAT officers actually fired (thirty-eight) weaponsbut the "prolonged gunfire at 1466 East Fifty-fourth Street caused the barrel riflings of [twelve] weapons to completely wear out and the magazine springs to become unserviceable." The LAPD allocated $1,450 for the replacement of two M-16 and ten AR-15 rifle barrels. The SWAT siege team fired a total of 5,371 bullet slugs (cost: $1,010.13) and seventy-five tear-gas rockets ($975) and tossed eight tear-gas canisters ($99.60). The cost of two police helicopters hovering over the scene for four hours was billed at $415.53; 321 police vehicles were assigned to the scene and related area patrol (mileage cost: $1,435.98), and $3,386 worth of damage was done to police equipment (half weapons damage, half vehicle damage). Personnel costs were substantial:
The LAPD assembled a task force of 410 officers for the siege. On the day of the shoot-out, 305 received assignments and 105 were held in reserve. The following day, Saturday, 196 officers were assigned for crowd control and traffic and "crime scene security." (Through the early-morning hours, into the day and night, a crowd often in the thousands gathered at the scene.) On Sunday 157 officers were again assigned to crowd and traffic control in the area. Associating the cost of all three days with the incident, the police report billed personnel costs (over half in overtime pay) at $59,581.81. Adding all expenses, the LAPD report tallied the cost of eradicating the SLA in Los Angeles at $67,576.55.
The coroner's announcement that Patty Hearst was not among the victims was received as a public-relations godsend at the Parker Center headquarters of the LAPD. A second plus came by way of a subtle comment on the character of DeFreeze: LA coroner Thomas Noguchi, famed for his handling of the Robert Kennedy and Tate-LaBianca murders, issued a verbal report claiming that the Field Marshal had committed suicide, noting powder burns in the head wound. (Noguchi also promised an unusual "psychologi-cal autopsy," an investigation into the "compulsive" elements in their refusal to surrender. Never in all his experience, he said, had he seen such unyielding behavior in the face of flames. Yet several months later, when the formal coroner's report was legally fileddetailing the autopsies performed the day after deathit was clearly stated that DeFreeze's wound was not self-inflicted and that no gunpowder residue was found. Noguchi, severely criti-cized in the press for the misleading earlier statement, refused to discuss the discrepancy. More than a year later no "psychological autopsy" had been issued.)
In the hours, days, and weeks following the shoot-out, there were numerous, scattered, and contradictory reports of Tania, Teko, and Yolanda being seen in the Los Angeles area. The three had quickly slipped from sight.
Then, three weeks later, from an unknown hideout there came another communiqué, the last taped message ever received from the "Malcolm X Combat Unit" of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Speaking with evident rage, pain, and grief, TaniaPa-tricia Hearstgave the SLA eulogy for the six victims. General TekoBill Harrisalso gave his version of the battle of Fifty-fourth and Compton. Rather incongruously at the time, Teko an-nounced that the SLA now took up the banner of the New World Liberation Front.
