Sad Memories

An Edmond, Oklahoma post office worker weeps following the shooting of 14 co-workers. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

On Jul. 18 of1984 James Huberty fatally shot 21 people and wounded 19 others in a mass shooting at a McDonald's restaurant in San  Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, California, before being killed by a police sniper. I was working at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco and was shipped out the following day to help AP staffer Lenny Ignelzi.
While the shooting was over the pain and suffering of friends and family members was beginning. I photographed the funeral of a young mother and child, buried together side by side, in a white silk-lined casket. It was very moving.
Fast forward two years later, and I was standing outside the Edmond, Oklahoma Post office the morning of Aug. 21, 1986. News reporters have huddled around then Oklahoma City district attorney Bob Macy.
He seemed winded as if struggling for a breath when he looked up from a note pad and said: "seven dead so far, but there may be more." It was then that I turned and began photographing postal workers weeping and clinging to one another. When the day had finished, Patrick Wayne Sherrill had murdered 14 co-workers before killing himself. He used 45 Calibur handguns smuggled out of a National Guard Armory. Described as a loner by co-workers Sherrill it was believed was about to be fired.
I photographed the funerals of most of the victims.
Five years later, I found myself standing outside a crime scene in Killeen, Texas. George Hennard drove his pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Cafeteria. He left his vehicle and then shot and killed 23 people and wounded 27 others. Like many, he then killed himself.
As of 2018, the Lubby's massacre ranked as the sixth-deadliest shooting in the U.S. by a single shooter.
The single thread that runs through all of these shootings is the question of "Why?'
Why would someone do something like this? What could be so wrong with the mind of an individual that he would pick up a handgun or rifle and kill people?
In 1983 I photographed a man being shot to death outside a 7-11 in South Oklahoma City by a police SWAT team. He had attempted to rob the convenience store just as police arrived for a coffee break. He seemed to want to die. As he left the 7-11 he raised his shotgun, an antique and the swat team pumped his full of rifle rounds. He died later at an Oklahoma City hospital.
Death and funerals were a recurring part of my job as a photojournalist.