According to Mitchell's fiancée, a 29-year-old Temple member named Marylou Hill, he suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the deaths of his family.

[5] Mitchell returned to his old neighborhood in Los Angeles, and moved with Hill into a white, two-story Victorian house at 730 East 50th Street, just 50 feet away from the school that now stood on the property where his childhood home had been.

The house bore a crudely lettered sign reading "God's Love" and commanded a sweeping view of the school playground.

Mitchell developed a reputation in the neighborhood for his irrational behavior and his abuse of drugs such as PCP, the latter of which Hill vehemently disputed.

Reportedly, Mitchell's uncle had threatened to arm himself during the dispute, and Tyrone, in turn, fired three shots from a .30-caliber rifle into the air before police arrived.

Two months later he was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm within city limits, fined $200 and placed on two years' probation.

According to neighbors, in February 1984 he regularly fired at airliners passing overhead, which were landing at Los Angeles International Airport.

Los Angeles Fire Department paramedic Jack Frye and his partner drove directly onto the schoolyard and pulled children into their ambulance.

Mitchell was found laying face up on the floor of his second-story bedroom, dressed in camouflage pants, a khaki shirt, and jungle-style combat boots, with an empty knife scabbard attached to his belt.

[7] Carlos Lopez, 24, who had been jogging past the school when the shooting began, suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen and underwent surgery at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, where most of his pancreas and spleen were removed.

Nearly 100 friends and relatives throughout the Los Angeles area, most of them factory workers like Lopez, gathered at Park Lawn Cemetery in the City of Commerce.

[12] In 1991, California passed a law that mandated a 15-day (later 10-day) waiting period for the sale of rifles and shotguns and a background check on the buyer of the weapon.

[7] A toxicological study of Mitchell's body fluids postmortem by the Los Angeles County coroner found no PCP or other illegal drugs, and only a small amount of alcohol, .03%, less than a third of the legal limit.