At around 12.40 PM on Wednesday 16 October 1991, thirty-five-year-old Hennard drove his pick-up truck through the main entrance to the car park of Luby’s cafeteria, one of a chain of busy eateries situated on the Interstate 190 at Killeen, in Bell County, Texas. Hennard suddenly pushed his foot down on the accelerator and catapulted the pick-up through the plate glass front window, showering diners with glass and debris and trapping one man underneath the truck. As the vehicle came to a halt, Hennard swung himself out of the driver’s seat yelling: ‘This is what Bell County has done to me!’ As the terrified man trapped under the truck managed to pull himself free, Hennard raised his right arm; gripped tightly in his hand was the grey metallic bulk of a Glock-17 semi-automatic pistol. The first bullet tore through the fleeing man’s skull, after which Hennard turned his attention on the cowering group of diners. With a crazed fury, the gunman began methodically to cut them down with rapid fire, always on the move, always shooting, and when one clip was exhausted, Hennard had plenty more in his pockets. With Hennard choosing his victims apparently randomly and shooting at point-blank range, there is no telling how long the massacre would of continued if armed police had not arrived on the scene. During the early panic one customer had hurled himself through a large unbroken side window, suffering serious cuts to himself but allowing others to escape and raise the alarm.

Now Hennard’s attentions transferred to duelling with the police marksmen who were gradually closing in. It was a police bullet that finally stopped George Hennard, and bleeding from a wound he fled into the corridor behind the eating area; with a last gesture of defiance he pumped a bullet through his own left eye and deep into his deranged brain. The killing spree had lasted just ten minutes; amid the blood and wreckage lay twenty-two dead and eighteen wounded. As helicopters and military and civilian ambulances were ferrying the wounded to local hospitals, a refrigerated lorry was commandeered for use as an ad hoc morgue to keep the bodies of the dead out of the searing Texan heat.