IAPE Evidence Blog

Seat­tle Post-Intelligencer
BYLINE: SAM SKOLNIK P-I REPORTER

Seat­tle, WA

The Everett pawn­shop that sold Buford Fur­row a semi­au­to­matic hand­gun allegedly used dur­ing last summer’s shoot­ing spree in Cal­i­for­nia is being tar­geted in a wrongful-death suit.

Author­i­ties say Fur­row used the 9mm Glock to kill a Filipino-American postal worker in a Chatsworth, Calif., dri­ve­way on Aug. 10, 1999.
That same day, Fur­row, a for­mer Olympia res­i­dent with a his­tory of men­tal ill­ness, allegedly wounded three chil­dren, a teenage girl and a woman at the North Val­ley Jew­ish Com­mu­nity Cen­ter in nearby Grenada Hills.

Fur­row has pleaded not guilty to charges stem­ming from the shootings.

Accord­ing to the suit, filed yes­ter­day, Glock Inc. and other mak­ers and sell­ers of guns in Furrow’s pos­ses­sion are par­tially respon­si­ble for the attack at the com­mu­nity cen­ter and the death of postal worker Joseph Ileto.

The Everett pawn­shop, Loaner Pawn Shop Too, and the store’s for­mer man­ager, David McGee, are named as defen­dants. Pawn­shop employ­ees “fre­quently bought and sold many firearms from and to Fur­row, knew Fur­row per­son­ally, and had at least a rea­son­able basis for con­clud­ing that Fur­row, if in pos­ses­sion of firearms, was a dan­ger to oth­ers and to the pub­lic gen­er­ally,” the suit alleges.

The suit was filed in Los Ange­les County Supe­rior Court by Ileto’s mother and the par­ents of three chil­dren who were wounded in the attack.

Fur­row was con­victed of a knife assault at a Kirk­land men­tal health facil­ity in 1998. He is an avowed white suprema­cist with ties to vio­lent hate groups.

Josh Hor­witz, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, said Fur­row shouldn’t have been allowed to build and main­tain an arse­nal of semi­au­to­matic and assault-style weapons.

Pawn­shops that sell guns have a respon­si­bil­ity to pre­vent guns from get­ting into the wrong hands, Hor­witz said. “If (the pawn­shop man­ager) had actual knowl­edge or even implied knowl­edge that Fur­row was men­tally unsta­ble, he has an oblig­a­tion not to sell that gun,” the lawyer said. But John St. John, the owner of the pawn­shop and three other Everett busi­nesses, said the sale of the Glock to Fur­row sat­is­fied all fed­eral reg­u­la­tions. St. John said Fur­row never acted strangely dur­ing his vis­its to the shop or gave him any rea­son to be con­cerned. St. John called Furrow’s actions “twisted and sick” but said his busi­ness shouldn’t bear any respon­si­bil­ity for the crimes. “What, are we sup­posed to psy­cho­log­i­cally eval­u­ate every cus­tomer who comes through the door?” he said.

McGee, the for­mer man­ager, said Fur­row never men­tioned “that off-the-wall stuff” he had been involved in and that he didn’t seem dan­ger­ous or unstable.

Paul Jan­nuzzo, gen­eral coun­sel of Georgia-based Glock Inc., said yes­ter­day he had not yet heard of the suit and couldn’t comment.

In addi­tion to the pawn­shop, McGee and Glock, the defen­dants include the mak­ers or sell­ers of six other guns seized from Fur­row after the shootings.

It is unclear where Fur­row ini­tially bought the Glock he later pawned. Fed­eral agents have spec­u­lated that Fur­row bought it in early 1998, at a gun show in Spokane.

The gun was first pur­chased in 1996 by the Cos­mopo­lis Police Depart­ment in Grays Har­bor County. The depart­ment then traded it to a gun dealer. 

This report includes mate­r­ial from The Asso­ci­ated Press.

CORRECTION-DATE: August 23, 2000

Buford Fur­row, the man accused of killing a postal worker and wound­ing three chil­dren at a Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter in Cal­i­for­nia, pawned his own weapons and then redeemed them at Loaner Pawn Shop Too in Everett. A story about a wrongful-death law­suit against the shop, on Page B1 of the Seat­tle and the North­west sec­tion Aug. 11, may not have made clear the nature of the pawn­shop transactions.

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