In Memory April 4, 1991 · Sacramento, California

What can the Good Guys hostage crisis of 1991 teach us about active shooter prevention today?
Thirty-five years ago today three innocent people lost their lives in the largest hostage rescue operation in American history. The warning signs were there. The infrastructure to act on them was not. The PRO Model™ by Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC was built so that history does not repeat. We remember Kris Sohne. John Fritz. Fernando Gutierrez. aspppro.com/contact-us

Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC  ·  aspppro.com  ·  April 4, 2026

History Cannot Be Ignored

Thirty-five years ago today April 4, 1991, 41 people walked into an electronics store in Sacramento, California and the world watched helplessly as the worst unfolded. Three of them did not come home. We remember them. We learn from what happened. And we build so it never happens again.

By Chris Grollnek  ·
Nation’s Leading Active Shooter Prevention Expert  ·
Founder, Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC  ·
aspppro.com

I was watching the news when it happened, most of us were.

April 4, 1991. Sacramento, California. A Good Guys electronics store on the corner of 65th Street and Stockton Boulevard. Four young men walked in armed with pistols and a shotgun, and within minutes, 41 employees and customers were held at gunpoint in what would become the largest hostage rescue operation in American history.

For eight and a half hours, the world watched live on television. The hostage takers lined people up against the glass front doors, human shields in plain view of cameras and news crews who could not look away and could not help. The demands were incoherent, and the negotiations struggled. And when it ended, three innocent people did not go home.

Kris Sohne. John Fritz. Fernando Gutierrez.

Thirty-five years ago today.

I am writing this post today, not to sensationalize what happened. Not to capitalize on tragedy. Not to sell fear or use grief as a marketing tool, which is something I have watched this industry do for decades, and something I refuse to do. I am writing this because history has lessons that get buried under time, convenience, and comfort. And the lesson of April 4, 1991, is one that America has still not fully learned.

What Happened That Day

The facts of April 4, 1991, are documented in detail, and I encourage anyone who wants to understand how these situations unfold to read the historical record carefully. Here is what matters most for this conversation.

Four young men, teenagers, and a young adult in their late teens and early twenties walked into that store that afternoon carrying weapons they had purchased legally just one week earlier. They were frustrated, felt invisible, could not find work, and did not learn the language. They felt that their lives in America had failed them before those lives had really begun.

Were there warning signs before that day? Almost certainly yes. Were there people in their lives who sensed something was wrong? Quite possibly. Was there any infrastructure, any reporting system, any behavioral threat assessment process, any anonymous channel to raise a concern that could have intercepted what was building inside those four young men before they walked through that door?

No, there was not.

That is not an indictment of law enforcement, as the officers, negotiators, and tactical teams who responded that day were working with the tools and protocols of 1991. They were doing everything they knew how to do in an era before modern hostage negotiation science had matured, before behavioral threat assessment was a standard discipline, before we understood what we now know about the pathway to violence and where it can be interrupted.

But 35 years have passed, and the question I ask every single day is whether the tools that now exist, the science that has been built, the frameworks that have been proven, the culture of prevention that is possible are actually being used. Or whether most organizations are still operating with the equivalent of 1991 protocols dressed up in modern language.

What the Industry Did With the Pain

Here is the part that troubles me most. And I say this with respect for everyone who has tried to help, but with honesty about what has actually happened.

After every major violent incident in American history, after Good Guys, after Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after Uvalde, a $4.4 billion industry rises up to sell the fear back to the people who just lived through it. Bulletproof backpacks, panic button apps, lockdown drills that traumatize children. Response training that starts at the moment violence has already arrived.

None of that is prevention; it’s all a response dressed up as preparation. And response as necessary as it is has never once stopped a shooting before it started.

The men who walked into that store in Sacramento on April 4, 1991, did not appear out of nowhere. They had histories, struggles, warning signs, and they had people in their lives. What they did not have and what the people around them did not have was a system that could see what was building and do something about it before it became irreversible.

The system currently in place is called the PRO Model™. It has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Defense. It has three documented saves. And it is available right now to every organization in America that is ready to stop hoping and start preventing.

What 35 Years Should Have Taught Us

I want to be very careful here because I have enormous respect for the law enforcement professionals who responded that day in Sacramento. They ran toward something most people would run away from. They made decisions under impossible pressure. Many of them carried what happened for the rest of their careers.

The lessons I draw from April 4, 1991, are not lessons about their failures. They are lessons about what was missing and what has been built since then to fill those gaps.

Why We Do This Work

I want to be honest about something that I think gets lost in the noise of the security industry.

We are not in this business because it is a good market. We are not in this because there is money in tragedy. We are in this because three people named Kris Sohne, John Fritz, and Fernando Gutierrez walked into a store on April 4, 1991, and did not walk out. Because a survivor named Lisa Joseph was five months pregnant that day and suffered a miscarriage while a gun was held to her head. Because her uncle was killed in front of her. Because 14 people were wounded. Because 41 families spent eight and a half hours not knowing whether the people they loved were alive.

And because none of that had to happen if the right tools had existed and been used.

Those tools now exist. The PRO Model™ Prevention. Response. Options. is the answer to the question that April 4, 1991 asked and left unanswered. It is the framework that identifies the warning signs before the weapons are purchased. It is the reporting culture that gives one person the courage to speak up. It is the threat assessment infrastructure that evaluates the concern and coordinates with law enforcement before the situation becomes irreversible.

It has worked three times in three documented saves. Three groups of real people who went home because the PRO Model™ was in place.

History cannot be ignored. But it also does not have to repeat.