SAN ANTONIO — In less than 24 hours, the Battle of Flowers Parade will bring smiles to thousands, but 40 years ago it drew blood and tears.
On April 27, 1979, Ira Attebury turned a day of festivities into chaotic disarray, spraying bullets into crowds, killing two women and wounding more than 50 people, including six police officers.
Parade goers scattered as Attebury fired shots for about 30 minutes from an RV parked on East Grayson and Broadway.
Gary DeLaune and Ron Smith dodged bullets to bring KENS 5 viewers live coverage for more than two hours from the scene. DeLaune described the moment like a scene from a battlefield.
“Glass shards were flying over me as I was crawling along,” DeLaune recalled.
He interviewed several people from the scene including Dianne Wick, a woman whose wild panic caught on camera would later become an iconic image of the Fiesta bloodshed.
DeLaune and Smith reunited for the first time in ten years at KENS 5 to recount the deadly event.
"The first 30 minutes I was there, I know there were two to 300 shots and he was shooting just all over the place,” Smith said. “He aimed specifically for some police officers and some bystanders and hit the mark."
When Attebury’s gun jammed, police officers stormed the RV and found him dead.
"They started shooting from the rooftop into the RV, I had all of that, I had all that," Smith said. “It was probably 10 minutes, it sounded like World War II."
Smith worked through the shooting, it wasn’t until reality set in that he realized the level of danger.
“I could have been killed very easily," Smith said.
"It was pretty scary," DeLaune recalled, but he says in the moment he was focused on getting the story.
DeLaune remembers later seeing scores of guns and ammunition police confiscated from Attebury’s RV.
"He had 15 weapons including an automatic weapon and rifles and shotguns and pistols and 3,000 rounds of ammunition, 3,000 now think of that," DeLaune said.
"A situation like that is something you never forget," Smith said.
Watch our YouTube playlist for more archival footage of the 1979 Battle of Flowers Massacre.