Shooting Near Killeen, Texas, Reminiscent Of 1991 Luby's Massacre

by Yuliya Talmazan | November 5, 2009 at 01:33 pm

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The army base shooting that killed 7 people in Fort Hood, Texas, today brings the memories of the Luby's massacre that took place in Killeen, Texas, a town next Fort Hood, on October 16, 1991. Gunman George Hennard drove his truck into Luby's Cafeteria, and than shot and killed 23 people. Hennard committed suicide after the shootings. The incident remained the deadliest random shooting incident in American history until the Virginia Tech Massacre that claimed the lives of 32 people.

For more than 15 years, the city next to the sprawling Fort Hood military base had the dubious distinction of being the site of the deadliest mass shooting in the United States -- until a student killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech in 2007.

"You can never prepare for an incident like this," says Killeen city councilman Fred Latham, who was mayor pro tem of the city, which had a population of about 66,000 at the time of the shooting. But Killeen's experience shows a city can survive the grief, pain and stigma of such an incident.

Virginia Tech massacre is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States with 32 people killed. Luby's massacre is the second deadliest with 23 people killed. The 1984 shooting at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, claimed the lives of 22 people. The 1966 shooting at the University of Texas took the lives of 14 people. In 1991, 13 people were killed when two students started a shooting rampage at the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

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