Delgado was an electronics engineer who had served with some distinction with the United States Air Force during the conflict in South-East Asia, and had returned to live in Bogota, Colombia, with his mother. At the age of fifty-two, Delgado was becoming difficult to get on with, and had developed an irritating affectation of addressing people as though they were on a military parade ground. On 4 December 1986, he told friends: ‘I have a problem. I don’t love my mother.’

A few hours later, in his apartment, Campo Elias Delgado shot his mother dead, wrapped her body in newspapers and set it on fire. He then went to three other apartments in the building and shot at anyone who opened the door. Delgado left the building having killed six neighbours. Now he went to an expensive restaurant and ate a meal alone. A waiter remembered that: ‘First he ate, then asked for the bill. Then he asked for two drinks and after paying the bill, he stood up and began shooting in all directions.’ Twenty-one diners were killed including a six-year-old girl before the gunman was himself shot dead by police officers.

The authorities later said that Delgado had spent more than thirty minutes on the rampage, reaching into a briefcase to reload his gun from five boxes of ammunition. The examining magistrate, Judge Lucero Echeverri de Henao, said that Delgado ‘handled his gun with chilling calmness’, and had carefully and deliberately aimed at the heads of many of his victims.