During his recent appearance on The Offspring's "Time to Relax" podcast, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo revealed that he and his family were once caught in the middle of a shootout between the Manson Family and the local police in the Hawthorne area of Los Angeles.
Trujillo, who said he was 6 when the incident took place, was "staying at his grandma's house." "The gun shop, the army surplus shop around the corner on Hawthorne Boulevard, was robbed. And basically, the Manson family had this grand scheme. You can check it out on the internet," he said.
The bassist noted that the Manson Family members "were gonna rob the gun store and get their ammo and everything, and they were gonna go to [Los Angeles International Airport], and the plan was to hijack a 747 and demand that Charlie gets sent to them, and they're gonna take this plane to God knows where."
Charles Manson and four other members of his family had been indicted in December 1969 for the murders of several people in the area.
"Cops show up. There's a shootout. We're hearing gunshots, the whole deal. All of a sudden you get the [police helicopters], and they're flying around. They're talking through their kind of intercom, whatever they got going up there: 'Everybody, take cover.' … And so my dad turns off all the lights. We're hiding in the shower. And it was really eerie," Trujillo concluded.
(Photo: Ralph Arvesen, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)
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