Campus Alert Archive
CSUF

Seven Dead in 90 Seconds: The Library Custodian Who Brought a .22 to Work

CAactive shooteradvisorymedium confidence
Confirmed Threat

Shortly before 7:00 AM PDT on July 12, 1976, custodian Edward Charles Allaway entered the California State University, Fullerton library (now Pollak Library) with a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic rifle and killed seven people on the first-floor lobby and the basement Instructional Media Center, wounding two more. The attack predates campus emergency notification systems by more than three decades; word of the shooting spread by phone calls, building intercoms, and people running through hallways. Allaway fled in a victim's car and surrendered by telephone around 9:00 AM PDT from the Hilton Inn in Anaheim, where his estranged wife worked as a switchboard operator.

Alerts
2
Response
—
Killed
7
Injured
2
Institution
California State University, Fullerton
Public Masters · CA
~21,000 students
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

2 messages in sequence · 1 verified verbatim

Some alert texts below are approximate reconstructions from news coverage, not confirmed verbatim transcripts. Reconstructed texts are shown in italic with a dashed border. Verified verbatim texts have a solid border and are marked accordingly.

INITIAL ALERTPhone
Approximate reconstruction244 chars
[No formal campus alert system existed in 1976. Library staff who heard the shooting telephoned the campus switchboard and Fullerton Police Department; the only mass-notification mechanism on campus was the building intercom and word-of-mouth.]

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

In 1976, there was no Clery Act, no campus emergency-notification regulation, no SMS, no email, and no public-address system tied into a campus-wide alert protocol
Library staff who survived the initial volley dialed campus security and 911 from desk phones; some attempted to barricade reading-room doors with furniture
The shooting unfolded across two floors of the library in roughly 90 seconds, faster than any phone-tree could conceivably notify the campus
Many people in the building first learned of the shooting from co-workers shouting in stairwells or from the sound of gunfire itself
FOLLOW-UPPhone
Verified verbatimEdward Allaway's surrender phone call to police from the Hilton Inn in Anaheim, as documented in court records and Los Angeles Times coverage and reproduced in Wikipedia and multiple journalistic sources183 chars
I went berserk at Cal State Fullerton, and I committed some terrible act. I'd appreciate it if you people would come down and pick me up. I'm unarmed, and I'm giving myself up to you.
This is the only contemporaneous, word-for-word message preserved from the day of the shooting; no formal campus alert text from July 12, 1976 has survived in any public archive
Allaway's call came from the hotel switchboard where his estranged wife worked — she did not take the call, but the operator who did relayed it directly to Fullerton Police
His use of 'berserk' and 'some terrible act' became central to his successful insanity defense in the 1977 trial
The call was placed approximately two hours after the first shots were fired in the Pollak Library lobby
Context

Background

The 1976 Cal State Fullerton massacre is one of the deadliest U.S. campus shootings of the 20th century and the worst mass killing in Orange County, California, until the 2011 Seal Beach shooting. Edward Charles Allaway, a 37-year-old custodian who had been employed by the university since May 1975 (about 14 months), purchased a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic rifle at a Kmart in Buena Park the day before the attack. On the morning of July 12, 1976, he carried the rifle into the library's first-floor lobby in a duffel bag and opened fire, then descended to the basement Instructional Media Center, where most of the victims worked. The attack lasted approximately 90 seconds and killed seven people. Allaway fled in a victim's car, drove to the Hilton Inn in Anaheim where his estranged wife worked as a switchboard operator, and telephoned the Fullerton Police Department to surrender. He was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder; a 1977 jury convicted him of six first-degree and one second-degree murder counts, but a separate sanity phase found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to Patton State Hospital and later transferred to Napa State Hospital in 2016. The case is significant for this archive because it pre-dates virtually every modern campus alert mechanism — the Clery Act would not become law until 1990, SMS notification would not arrive on campuses until the mid-2000s, and the CSU system's Everbridge mass-notification platform would not be deployed until decades later. The notification method on July 12, 1976 was, simply, people running through hallways and dialing the operator.
Analysis

Key Findings

The 1976 Fullerton massacre predates the Clery Act (1990) by 14 years; no formal emergency notification framework existed
The attack lasted approximately 90 seconds — far faster than any phone-tree or building-intercom system of the era could have notified the campus
The shooter was a custodian, not a student or faculty member — a category of campus insider often excluded from threat-assessment frameworks of the era
Allaway surrendered by telephone from a hotel where his estranged wife worked, indicating a domestic-violence motivation overlapped with workplace-violence dynamics
Until the 2011 Seal Beach shooting, this remained the deadliest mass killing in Orange County history
Outcome
Seven dead: Paul Herzberg (30), Bruce Jacobson (32), Donald Karges (41), Deborah Paulsen (25), Seth Fessenden (72), Frank Teplansky (51), and Stephen Becker (32). Two wounded: Maynard Hoffman (64) and Donald Keran (55). Allaway was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1977 and committed to Patton State Hospital; five mental health professionals diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia.
Provenance

Sources

  1. Source
    1976 California State University, Fullerton massacre - Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
  2. Student Paper
    41 years later, the CSUF massacre is still heavy on the hearts of those related - Daily Titan
    dailytitan.com
  3. News
    Cal State Fullerton marks 40th anniversary of mass shooting - LAist
    laist.com
  4. News
    CSU Fullerton gunman transferred to 'less secure' NorCal mental hospital without notice - ABC7 Los Angeles
    abc7.com
  5. Source
    On this day: the Fullerton massacre - In Times Gone By
    intimesgoneby.wordpress.com
Tags
active-shooterlibrary-shooting1970spre-clerypre-modern-alertingcaliforniacsuworkplace-violencecustodian-perpetratorinsanity-defensehistorical
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion