7. The raid was the biggest in California history
When the police descended on the house in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974 – the day after the sporting goods shootout – they would fire over six thousand rounds of ammunition. A task force of 374 men – including a SWAT team – surrounded the house. The police issued a verbal warning, but the occupants of the house ignored it. The police were determined to get the terrorist gang, alive or dead, even if doing so meant that Patty would die, as well. As the events unfolded, they realized that the SLA members were not going to give up and would rather die than surrender.
The police threw in canisters of tear gas to try to force the members out, but they refused to surrender. The house finally caught on fire, and after firefighters extinguished the blaze, all but three members of the SLA -including the “field marshal,” Defreeze – were found dead. They had either been shot or burned to death, and police put what remained of the group’s arsenal on public display as a means of posthumously humiliating them. The three members who survived the raid were the three who were at the sporting goods store the day before: William and Emily Harris, and Patty Hearst.
