Killer of 7 at Cal State in ’76 Is Returned to Atascadero

Edward Charles Allaway, who killed seven people during a shooting rampage at Cal State Fullerton 12 years ago, was transferred back to Atascadero State Hospital on Wednesday after relatives of his victims had protested his move to a hospital in San Bernardino.

Donald Stockman, executive director of Patton State Hospital, said the state Department of Mental Health decided that Allaway’s transfer there from Atascadero last May “was inappropriate,” and flew Allaway back to the San Luis Obispo County hospital.

“His treatment needs could best be taken care of by Atascadero,” Stockman said. “He has been at Atascadero since 1978, and the treatment team there had repeatedly recommended that he stay at Atascadero.”

Stockman said Allaway was “inadvertently” transferred to Patton hospital along with 35 other patients. When he became aware of the recommendations of Atascadero doctors, Stockman said, he and other officials reassessed the transfer.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin G. Engquist and relatives of Allaway’s victims vehemently opposed the move to a less restrictive hospital such as Patton, saying it eventually could lead to his placement in an outpatient program, or even to his release.

Department of Mental Health officials said at the time that Patton’s release policies were no more liberal than those at Atascadero.

Stockman said Wednesday that the concerns expressed by Engquist and the victims’ relatives “certainly played a role” in the decision to send Allaway back to Atascadero.

Engquist could not be reached for comment.

Allaway was a janitor at the Cal State Fullerton library when he shot nine people there on July 12, 1976, killing seven of them. He had been hospitalized in a mental institution about eight years before the shootings, complaining that he had been in a state of depression his entire life.

He explained the shootings by saying that he believed people had been conspiring against him.

At his murder trial, Allaway was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Department of Mental Health, which assigned him to its most secure hospital, Atascadero.