Sniper attack eerily resembled film from years earlier
The 1952 film “The Sniper,” set in San Francisco, tells the story of a disturbed, misogynistic World War II veteran who unfortunately still has his Army rifle. He eventually acts out his psychosis from a Union Street rooftop, targeting a woman who has spurned him. As time goes on, he guns down several more women.
It’s not known whether Thomas Antonio Gutierrez ever saw “The Sniper.” But his criminal rampage on Aug. 15, 1959 — which, fortunately, did not result in any deaths except that of a wayward bird — bears a striking resemblance to the events depicted in Edward Dmytryk’s film.
On that Saturday morning nearly 60 years ago, the 22yearold Gutierrez met a 24yearold prostitute named Jean “Candy” Evans in a bar. Gutierrez, who had a long record of convictions for soliciting, took Evans to a hotel called the Guest House on Webster Street in the Western Addition, where she agreed to have sex with him for $10. But after he gave her the money, Evans rebuffed his advances.
Enraged, Gutierrez went to his nearby home, where he grabbed his .22caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and a box of 50 cartridges. He also grabbed a bottle of rum and a Coke. He climbed onto the roof of an abandoned building across the street from the Guest House, lay down and began shooting at everyone who came out of the hotel, pausing between shots to sip his rum and Coke.
“The whole world is wrong! I had to kill someone. I’m only sorry I didn’t get her. She’s the one I was after.”
Thomas Antonio Gutierrez, whose spurned sexual advances led to a shooting rampage
His first victim was 39yearold hotel resident John Starks, who escaped death by a fraction of an inch when a bullet creased his forehead. As Starks crawled away out of the line of fire, nine more bullets smashed into the window of the Guest House.
A passing motorist, 52yearold Cy Samuels, heard the shots and stopped. When he realized there was a sniper on the roof, Samuels pulled out a .38 automatic that he brought to his cigar store for protection and began blasting away at Gutierrez.
As this Wild West shootout unfolded, a city ambulance arrived. When 29yearold ambulance steward Charles Cozzens jumped out to help Starks, Gutierrez shot him in the chest.
Cozzens collapsed in the street. Samuels called out to him, “Are you hit bad? Try to crawl under the truck.” Incapable of moving, Cozzens was only able to gasp, “Pretty bad, pretty bad.”
The final victim was a pigeon that had the misfortune to fly into the shootout. Gutierrez blasted it out of the air. “I just had to kill something,” he said later.
Soon the first policeman, 34yearold George Rosko of the Juvenile Bureau, arrived on the scene. Rosko ran through a hail of bullets to reach the ambulance and put out a call for help. As Samuels sprayed covering fire at Gutierrez, Rosko took up a position on Eddy Street where he had a clear line of sight at the sniper.
His first shot missed, but his second struck the telescopic sight of the rifle, knocking the weapon from Gutierrez’s hands and sending it plunging to the street below.
His gun gone, Gutierrez lay face down. He was handcuffed and taken to the Northern Station. The gunfight had lasted almost half an hour.
The Chronicle reported that Gutierrez was initially calm, but after he was put in a cell he began kicking, shouting and banging his head against his arms. “Let me out of this cage! I can’t stand it!” he screamed.
When he was let out of the cell, he lunged at reporters and photographers and yelled as police wrestled with him, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you if it takes 10,000 years!”
Gutierrez told police that Evans had cheated him and that he had gone on his shooting spree to get even with her. “The whole world is wrong!” Gutierrez ranted. “I had to kill someone. I’m only sorry I didn’t get her. She’s the one I was after.”
The wouldbe killer told Rosko, “If you hadn’t hit the gun, I’d have got another one.” He said he had someone lined up in the crosshairs when the policeman’s shot smashed the scope.
That scope also saved Gutierrez’s life: Rosko’s shot would otherwise have hit him right between the eyes.
Gutierrez was booked on three counts of attempted murder. Evans, who had wisely remained inside the hotel until the shooting was over, was arrested and charged with prostitution.
The story was picked up by the Associated Press, which said only that “girl trouble” was responsible for the rampage.
In November 1959, Gutierrez went on trial. He initially pleaded not guilty, but after Starks and Cozzens testified for the prosecution, he changed his plea to guilty to two counts of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, on condition that the third attemptedmurder charge be dropped. He was sentenced to one to 14 years in prison.
As an aside, the case shed light on a serious problem with working conditions at San Francisco’s emergency hospital system, which operated a fleet of ambulances and provided free minor medical care 24 hours a day to city residents until it closed in 1978.
Ambulance drivers and stewards received no city pay if they were injured in the line of duty. Cozzens survived the shooting but was unable to work, so he, his wife and two children and his mother had to survive on his $40aweek state disability payment.
Forty dollars a week for five people wasn’t much even in those days, and Cozzens’ plight led to calls to reform the emergency hospital system. But that system was perpetually underfunded, and there proved to be no easy fix. Cozzens soon slipped to the back pages of newspapers and then to obscurity.
Gary Kamiya is the author of the bestselling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/portals. For more features from 150 years of The Chronicle’s archives, go to sfchronicle.com/vault. Email: metro@sfchronicle.com