Campo Elías Delgado
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Campo Elías Delgado (June 24, 1934 – December 4, 1986) was a Colombian Vietnam War veteran who killed 30 people, wounding 15 at a Bogotá Italian restaurant before being shot dead by police.
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[edit] Life
Delgado was born June 24, 1934, in Bogotá, Colombia. He was drafted into the Vietnam War as an electrician in 1970. Friends reported that his experience in Vietnam had made him antisocial and bitter. He was no longer able to develop friendships. He blamed his mother for this. As the years went by, he grew more and more resentful of his mother. This was the official cause of the massacre.
[edit] The massacre
The massacre occurred in the afternoon of December 4, 1986, in Delgado's apartment complex, and resumed at an expensive Italian restaurant. He was armed only with one .22 Magnum handgun, five boxes of ammunition hidden in a briefcase, and a hunting knife, which he discarded while walking to the restaurant.
[edit] The apartment complex
Delgado packed his briefcase full of ammunition and loaded his pistol. He walked up behind his mother and killed her with a single stab to the back of the neck. He then wrapped her corpse in newspapers and set them on fire. He then ran through the apartment complex screaming "Fuego! Fuego!" (Fire! Fire!) and lured people outside into the main hallway one by one and killed them. He killed one man with the knife, then opened up his briefcase and opened fire on them, killing five more people. He then walked out of the apartment and proceeded to the home of one of his colleagues, Mario Mendoza.
[edit] The visit
He discarded the knife about a hundred feet from his Mendoza's house. He then went inside and visited him and talked for nearly an hour. Delgado then exited his home and walked towards the restaurant. Mendoza, his only friend at that time, later wrote a prize-winning book about Delgado, entitled Satanas, in 1993.
[edit] The restaurant
Delgado arrived at the restaurant at around 19:30 EST and ordered an expensive meal and eight vodka tonics. About one hour into the dinner, he opened fire on the diners. A lady was quick to call the police and they got there ten minutes later. Delgado shot twenty-three people to death, mostly women, by the time they had arrived. His method was to corner his victim and shoot them at point-blank range in the forehead and then move on to the next victim. A further fifteen were wounded. Delgado promised himself not to kill any children, but he accidentally killed a six-year-old girl sitting at an adjacent table as a result of his pistol misfiring. When the police arrived, Delgado turned his attention to them and managed to fight them off for one minute. Eventually, he was killed with a shot to the temple by a policeman. However, it is widely believed that Delgado committed suicide, an attempt by the Colombian government to avoid negative publicity.
