Wednesday, Aug. 11, 1999 | 10:24 a.m.
The man who allegedly wounded five people at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles turned himself in today to the FBI after evading a nearly 24-hour manhunt that had spread across the West.
He told investigators "he wanted this to be a wake-up call to America to kill Jews," an agency source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The man, who identified himself as Buford O. Furrow, 37, said he took a cab from Los Angeles, about 240 miles southwest of Las Vegas, the source said.
He walked into the office and said, "You're looking for me, I killed the kids in Los Angeles." He said he assumed he had killed some children at there.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum said that he had filed a warrant charging Furrow with five counts of attempted murder, a procedure that allows authorities in Las Vegas to hold him for extradition to Los Angeles.
"We're charging him with the crime of deliberate, premeditated attempted murder," Hum said. Authorities will begin extradition proceedings after an arraignment.
The gunman had given the slip to police who arrived at the center within four minutes of the shootings Tuesday. He allegedly carjacked a Toyota at gunpoint about 20 minutes later - leaving behind a van full of ammunition, survival paraphernalia, and a book some link to white supremacist thought - then dumped the car at a motel and disappeared.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which maintains a database of white supremacists, has information that Furrow belonged to Aryan Nations in 1995, including a photo, said Mark Potok of the Montgomery, Ala.-based center.
"I have a picture of him, Furrow, in a Nazi outfit," Potok said today.
Furrow lived at times in Metaline Falls, Wash., once a haven for the supremacist group the Order, The Spokesman-Review reported in Spokane.
He served as a security guard at a white supremacist meeting in the 1990s and had a relationship with Debbie Mathews, widow of Order founder Robert J. Mathews, the paper said. Mathews was killed in 1984 when his hideout caught fire during a shootout with federal agents on Whidbey Island in Washington state.
Parents and children trickled back to the center summer programs under the gaze of armed security guards. The center planned to hold activities at a neighboring temple that served as refuge after the shooting.
"Nobody's going to scare us away," said J. Eliad, a parent who was bringing his 4-year-old daughter back.
"I feel good because my father's here," said Abby Dreyfuss, 10, who arrived hand-in-hand with her father, Jonathan.
The wounded include a 5-year-old boy who was hit in the abdomen and leg. He was in critical condition today after undergoing six hours of surgery and was given a fair chance of recovery.
Also hurt were center receptionist, 68-year-old Isabelle Shalometh, two 6-year-old boys and a 16-year-old girl who was a counselor at the center's summer camp that began Monday. The boys and the counselor were in stable condition today and Mrs. Shalometh, grazed on the arm and back as she dove for cover, was released from the hospital Tuesday night.
The violence was the latest shooting at workplaces and schools across the country, and brought immediate calls for stricter gun control and measures to protect children.
"Once again, our nation has been shaken and our hearts torn by gun violence," President Clinton said in Washington. "It calls on all of us not only to give our thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, but intensify our resolve to make America a safer place."
The organization that runs the community center posted armed guards at its several other operations in the region, and security was stepped up at children's programs in other states, said Nina Lieberman Giladi, an associate vice president.
She said children, including her son who saw two bleeding victims, wanted to get together with the other children to reassure themselves they were safe. She said her son "just wanted to talk. He wanted to talk about his friends, talk about what happened, talk about why this man did this."
The report of the carjacking and discovery of the abandoned van came within 20 minutes and 4 miles of the shooting.
In the red-and-white van, officers found large amounts of ammunition in metal boxes, magazines for an assault rifle, a booklet titled Ranger Handbook and freeze-dried food. Various news reports have said there was a copy of the book "War Cycles, Peace Cycles" by Richard Kelly Hoskins, which the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a staple of hate group literature.
A few hours later, the carjacked Toyota was found parked outside a motel in Chatsworth, another suburb in the San Fernando Valley, but hours of cautious searching by SWAT teams failed to turn up the gunman.
Police refused to say how the search was being conducted today, but said it involved the FBI and spread to Washington state and elsewhere.
The abandoned van was purchased Saturday from the Tacoma (Wash.) Kar Korner, said the manager of the lot, who refused to be identified. Cmdr. Dave Kalish, a Los Angeles police spokesman, identified Furrow as the buyer of the van, which had Washington plates.
FBI agents visited an Olympia, Wash., home believed to be that of Furrow's father Tuesday night. The FBI refused to comment on the visit and nobody in the house would speak to reporters.
Furrow was sentenced this spring to eight months in jail for second-degree assault with a deadly weapon, KOMO-TV in Seattle reported Tuesday night.
The Seattle Times reported that late last year Furrow tried to commit himself at the Fairfax Psychiatric Hospital in Kirkland, a Seattle suburb, but got in trouble when he pulled a knife on staffers and eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree assault.
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