Mack Says He Blacked Out During Attack : Trial: Fired Convair worker testifies that he remembers nothing of the shootings that left one dead and one wounded.

By THOM MROZEK

July 9, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Just before a pair of Jan. 24 shootings that left one General Dynamics official dead and another severely wounded, Robert Earl Mack felt dizzy and experienced tingling sensations throughout his body.

Then, according to his testimony Wednesday, he saw “a big blur, a flash” that caused him to black out, obliterating his memory of the attack.

“A big, old orange blur shot through my head--whoosh--something like a blackout or something,” Mack said, adding that a tingling feeling emerged like an explosion from behind his left ear.

In his first testimony about the attack, the 24-year veteran of General Dynamics Convair Division said he had gone to a grievance hearing with the intention of killing himself in a far-reaching political statement intended to call attention to an unfair termination.

“I was going to terminate myself and give them their red money back with my own blood,” Mack testified at his trial in San Diego Superior Court.

During the period in which he shot and severely wounded his supervisor, 52-year-old James English, and then hunted down and killed Michael Konz, a 25-year-old labor negotiator, Mack said, his only sensation was that of riding a big, black cat.

Mack was called to testify on his own behalf by defense attorney Michael Roake, who said after Wednesday’s proceedings that he will ask the jury in the case to acquit his client because he was unconscious during the shootings.

“Something happened, like a short circuit in his brain,” Roake said.

Mack, who has pleaded guilty by reason of insanity, has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

The first questions Roake asked Mack set the scene for the three hours of testimony that would follow.

“Did you knowingly kill Michael Konz?” Roake inquired.

“No, sir,” Mack replied.

“Did you knowingly shoot James English?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you remember anything about the shootings at all?”

“No, sir, I don’t. . . . The last thing I remember, I was trying to talk and they wouldn’t let me talk.”

Mack, who was formally terminated from General Dynamics Convair Division only five days before the shootings, gave emotional testimony about his career at the aerospace firm, a job that began in 1968 and essentially defined his life.

Mack showed pride on the witness stand about his accomplishments and the top-secret security clearance he gained after being recruited on a downtown street to work at General Dynamics.

“My No. 1 goal was to be the first black man at General Dynamics with 50 years,” he said.

Because he was high on seniority lists, cutbacks in the defense industry and layoffs at Convair did not worry the man who worked for almost 10 years on the advanced cruise missile assembly line.

“You’d have to close the plant down to get to me,” he said, while admitting that this was a naive view that was shattered when both the company and his union failed to support him after a series of mishaps affected his attendance record at the end of last year.

Mack expressed devotion to the firm and said he knowingly violated both company policy and federal law when he punched time clocks that would bill the U.S. government for missile work he never performed.

“I was punching in illegally. . . . I wasn’t assigned to any bird (missile); I was pushing paper,” Mack testified, noting that he did this after receiving instructions to do so from English.

According to his testimony, Mack’s professional and personal life began to unravel Friday, Dec. 13, when English confronted him and said Mack had failed to punch the time clock.

The resulting pay dispute left Mack, his unemployed girlfriend and her daughter in such financial difficulty that they did not have any money with which to purchase Christmas presents.

Even though Mack had made a resolution to get married and straighten out his life in the new year, he was suspended Jan. 3, apparently for going in and out the front gate at the plant near Lindbergh Field. Mack said he made several trips in and out to buy food and coffee for fellow workers.

According to company officials, Mack was often late to work, resulting in disciplinary action by General Dynamics.

After being suspended--which he believed would last only three days--Mack withdrew into himself, according to his testimony. He was denied unemployment insurance and he said he avoided friends and neighbors so he would not be faced with any difficult questions that might have injured his pride.

Two weeks after his suspension, General Dynamics sent a letter, which Mack believed would ask him to return to work. He testified that he ceremoniously opened the letter, only to realize that he had been fired.

“They just took everything away from me right there,” Mack said, fighting back tears.

The letter ignited his imagination, fueling images such as the letter exploding with fire and his pillow bursting into flames, Mack testified. “I couldn’t go to sleep anymore,” he said.

Mack said he made the decision to kill himself at General Dynamics the day before he was summoned to his grievance hearing.

“If I would’ve killed myself at home, it would’ve been called a domestic dispute,” he testified. “A domestic dispute was not the cause of my life tumbling down.”

Furthermore, Mack said, he wanted to spur an investigation by the company, his union, civil rights advocates and the Department of Defense. “The message was very important,” he said. “It would’ve shown how they treated black people there.”

But Mack failed to follow through on his plan to kill himself. After blacking out, he testified, the first thing he remembered was a man jumping up and down in the office where he had taken refuge after the shootings.

“I had the gun to my head,” Mack said. “I guess that’s why he was jumping up and down again, shouting, ‘No, no, no!’ ”

Although he has no recollection of the attack, Mack expressed some regret for having killed one man and wounding another with a gunshot to the back of the head.

“I feel bad for both of them because I had nothing against Mr. English,” he testified. “I had nothing against Mr. Konz, either.”

Mack will be on the witness stand today, this time under cross-examination from Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Sickels.