Tyrone Mitchell

Reportedly, the uncle had threatened to arm himself during the dispute, and Tyrone, in turn, fired three shots from a .30-caliber rifle into the air before police arrived. Two months later he was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm within city limits, fined $200 and placed on two years' probation. Hill said that Mitchell kept a "high-powered rifle" in the house and, by 1984, he occasionally fired it at the sky. According to adjacent neighbors, in February 1984 Mitchell regularly shot at airliners passing overhead, which were landing at Los Angeles International Airport, located about five miles to the west. These incidents were not reported to police out of fear. In an incident on February 11, one of Mitchell's uncles reported to police that Mitchell had pointed a machine gun at him. No weapon was confiscated, no arrest made, and the matter was turned over to the city attorney.

At 2:23 pm on Friday, February 24, 1984, about 100 children of the 49th Street Elementary School had just emerged from their classrooms and onto the school's playground when Mitchell opened fire from the bay window of his house located just across the street. Police in a squad car heard shots ring out at 2:23 pm and reported the incident immediately. Mitchell shot 39 rounds from an AR-15 rifle and 18 rounds from two shotguns down into the crowd of students. Several children fell from their wounds in the schoolyard, while most escaped running back into the school and were taken to the library on the building's opposite side, where they waited while their parents were telephoned to pick them up.

At the time of the incident, Mitchell had injured 14 people, mostly children. Most of them were treated at local hospitals. One of the first children to fall under the attack was 10-year-old Shala Eubanks. A schoolyard supervisor, Albert Jones, 50, made several attempts to reach her, but every time he approached, more shots rang out, forcing him to take cover. Eubanks was carried into a classroom by two Los Angeles police officers. Two Los Angeles paramedics tried to save her, but their efforts were in vain. She died on the classroom floor. By late Friday night, three other casualties were in guarded but stable condition, another was in good condition, and the rest had been released from hospitals after treatment of minor injuries. Carlos Lopez, 24, had been walking past the school on his way to a nearby park for his daily jogging stint when the shooting erupted. He suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen and underwent surgery at Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital, where most of his pancreas and spleen were removed. He was listed in "guarded" condition for eight weeks until it worsened and he died on April 13, 1984.

Mitchell returned to the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where he was raised. He lived with his fiancée, Hill, in a two-story, white Victorian house at 730 East 50th Street, just 50 feet away from the school that now stood on the property where his childhood home had been. The house bore a crudely lettered sign "God's Love" and commanded a sweeping view of the school playground. Mitchell developed a reputation in the neighborhood for his irrational behavior and as a user of narcotics such as PCP. His fiancée vehemently denied that he had "a problem" with the drug. On December 5, 1979, about a year after his return, Mitchell was arrested at his residence. He had been in a dispute with his uncle and landlord, Willie Lee Mitchell, about who would relight the pilot light on Tyrone's water heater.

Tyrone Mitchell (October 17, 1955 – February 24, 1984) was an American criminal who fatally shot two students and wounded twelve others who were leaving 49th Street Elementary School in South Central Los Angeles, California, on February 24, 1984. Mitchell then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a double-barreled shotgun.

Mitchell was born to Lee Charles (July 24, 1931 – November 18, 1978) and Annie Lee Mitchell (July 7, 1930 – November 18, 1978) in Alabama. He grew up in a South Central Los Angeles house that was later razed to build the 49th Street Elementary School. Mitchell and his family were members of the Reverend Jim Jones's Peoples Temple, and they followed Jones — without Mitchell — in 1977 to Jonestown in Guyana. Mitchell lost both of his parents, four sisters and a brother in the mass murder-suicide that took place at Jonestown on November 18, 1978. According to Mitchell's fiancée, 29-year-old Marylou Hill, who would also join the Peoples Temple, he suffered a nervous breakdown as a result.