Luby's shooting

Incident

On October 16, 1991, a 35-year-old unemployed former Merchant Marine seaman named George Hennard drove a blue 1987 Ford Ranger pickup through the front plate-glass window of a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, at 12:39 p.m. Because it was Boss's Day, the restaurant was unusually full, with about 150 people inside. Hennard began shooting from inside the truck, using a Glock 17 and a Ruger P89 pistol. His first target was a veterinarian named Michael Griffith.

Hennard then got out of the truck and shouted that all the women of Killeen and Belton were vipers, blaming them and Bell County for what had happened to him and his family, and calling it payback day. He moved through the cafeteria, firing both pistols and choosing his victims deliberately. He called one woman a bitch before killing her, and said the same to another woman hiding under a bench near the serving line before shooting her dead. He shot Steve Ernst, who was hiding under a table.

Hennard then told a woman holding a crying baby to leave before he changed his mind; she ran out with the baby. After she left, he shot Ernst's wife in the arm, and the bullet went through her and killed 70-year-old Venice Ellen Henehan, Ernst's mother-in-law. During a pause in the shooting, Hennard approached the table of 28-year-old Tommy Vaughan. Vaughan threw himself through a window, creating an escape route.

Dozens of people pushed and shoved their way out, and about a third of the patrons escaped before police arrived minutes later. Hennard reloaded at least three times before officers showed up and exchanged gunfire with them. Wounded, he retreated to a spot between two bathrooms, where people were hiding with the doors blocked. Police told him to surrender, but he refused, saying he intended to kill more people.

Officers shot him twice more in the abdomen. With one of his weapons out of ammunition and his injuries worsening, he shot himself in the head with his last bullet. In total, he killed 23 people—10 of them with single shots to the head at close range—and wounded 27 others.

Perpetrator

George Pierre Hennard was born on October 15, 1956, in Sayre, Pennsylvania, into a wealthy family. He was the son of a Swiss-born surgeon and a homemaker, and had two younger siblings, brother Alan and sister Desiree. From age 5, he moved with his family to various cities as his father worked at several army hospitals, and they eventually settled in New Mexico, where his father worked at the White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces. After graduating from Mayfield High School in 1974, Hennard enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served for three years until honorably discharged.

He later worked as a merchant mariner but was dismissed for drug use, and several months later enrolled in a drug treatment program in Houston, Texas. Early in the investigation, the Killeen police chief said that Hennard "had an evident problem with women for some reason." After his parents divorced in 1983, his father moved to Houston and his mother moved to Henderson, Nevada. The Glock 17 and Ruger P89 9mm pistols he used were purchased in February 1991 at Mike's Gun House in Henderson.

Hennard worked several different jobs, including construction crews in South Dakota and Killeen, while living part-time in Nevada with his mother. In Texas, he lived in a redbrick colonial home in Belton that his family had purchased in 1980. He had stalked two women, sisters Jill Fritz and Jana Jemigan, who lived two blocks away from him, and sent them a five-page letter in June that included the lines: "Please give me the satisfaction of someday laughing in the face of all those mostly white treacherous female vipers from those two towns [Killeen and Belton] who tried to destroy me and my family" and "You think the three of us can get together some day?"

Aftermath

The day after the massacre, the U.S. House of Representatives was set to vote on an anticrime bill. Because some of the victims lived in his district, Representative Chet Edwards dropped his earlier opposition to a gun control measure in the bill. That measure, which would have outlawed certain weapons and magazines similar to the one Hennard used, failed to pass. Communities held prayer vigils, and grief, shock, and stress counseling was offered to the families of those killed, survivors, and police officers.

Groups like the Texas State Rifle Association argued for allowing Texans to carry concealed handguns. Democratic Governor Ann Richards vetoed such proposals, but in 1995, her Republican successor, George W. Bush, signed a concealed carry law. Suzanna Hupp, who was at the scene during the shooting, had campaigned for this law. Both of her parents, Alphonse "Al" Gratia and Ursula "Suzy" Gratia, were killed by Hennard. Hupp later said she wished she had her .38 revolver, but it was in her car, a hundred feet away, because she feared losing her chiropractor’s license if caught carrying it. She gave testimony across the country supporting concealed handgun laws and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1996.

A pink granite memorial, listing the date and the names of those killed, stands behind the Killeen Community Center. The cafeteria reopened five months after the massacre but closed for good on September 8, 2000. In 2006, a buffet named "Yank Sing" took over the space, and as of July 2026, it is still open.