At 1600 hours on May 17 , 1974, more than 410 officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, under the command of Captain Mervin King, along with the FBI, CHP, and LAFD established a command post at 57th and Alba Ave. The next three hours would become historic. Despite evacuation warnings, the residents of 1451 East 54th and 5337 Compton Ave. refused to leave their homes, and were directed by SWAT team members to lie on the floor. These people remained in their homes throughout the gunfight. Many of them found themselves pinned down by heavy gunfire. As the battle progressed, some of these people changed their minds, and during lulls in the gunfire, were then evacuated.

At 1745 hours, the squad leader of SWAT Team One used a bullhorn to broadcast, "Occupants of 1466 E. 54th St., this is the Los Angeles Police Department speaking. Come out with your hands up!" A small child walked out, along with an older man. The man claimed no one else was in the house, though the child stated that several people were in the house with guns and ammo belts. At 1753 hours, after several failed attempts to get anyone else to leave the house, a member of SWAT fired two 509 CS Flite-rite tear gas projectiles through the top of the west window. As soon as the second gas projectile dispersed, heavy bursts of automatic gunfire came from inside the front and rear of the house. Numerous bullets struck 54th St. and the buildings across from and to the rear of the SLA hideout. The gun battle continued, with very heavy automatic weapons fire coming from inside the house. The SWAT teams continued to respond to this fire with semiautomatic weapons, shotguns and tear gas. When a SWAT officer attempted to fire another round of tear gas into a window from a nearby roof, he was met with heavy machine gun fire from inside the house. More tear gas was fired. At 1841 hours, the house was on fire. A broadcast pleads, "Come on out! The house is on fire! You will not be harmed." There was no response. The house became fully engulfed in flames, and two women left from the rear of the house and one came out the front. All were taken into custody, but were found to not be part of the SLA. At 1850 hours, the SWAT team started receiving automatic weapons fire from air vents in the foundation of the house. Nancy Ling Perry, wearing military fatigues with a hunting knife attached to a web belt, comes out of a crawl hole. A second female, Camilla Hall, starts to emerge from the crawl hole, firing an automatic pistol toward members of SWAT. At this time, automatic weapons fire is still coming from the crawl hole behind Camilla Hall. Members of Swat fire in the direction of Camilla Hall and she drops to the ground and is dragged back through the crawl hole, out of view. Nancy Ling Perry falls approximately ten feet from the crawl hole. At 1859 hours, the squad leader of Team One informs the Fire Department that the hostile fire from 1466 E. 54th Street had ceased. He then requests that the Fire Department move their equipment to the scene of the incident. At 1900 hours, after hostile fire had ceased, and while ammunition is still exploding inside, the Fire Department began extinguishing the fire at the location and at the three adjacent residences. All fires were out by 1930 hours.

After the shooting had ceased and the fire had been extinguished, the task of locating evidence and removing bodies from the burned residence fell on investigators from Scientific Investigation Division, Criminal Conspiracy Section, the FBI, and the LA County Coroner’s Office. The locating, collecting and identification of evidence at the site began immediately after the removal of the fifth body on May 17th, and continued until May 19th. On May 19th at 0945 hours, investigators sifting through ashes and rubble, discovered a sixth body. Tons of debris had to be sifted, and every area searched in order to recover possible evidence. As the search progressed, it became evident that the SLA members had armed themselves with a veritable arsenal of weapons. Nineteen firearms, including rifles, pistols, and shotguns were recovered from the burned structure.

As the parents of Patricia Hearst waited and prayed that their daughter wasn’t among the dead, the LA County Coroner’s Office began the task of identifying the bodies. Coroner Thomas Noguchi personally phoned Patricia’s tycoon father to assure him that his daughter was not among the dead. The other SLA members’ parents had to learn of their children’s deaths from Dr. Noguchi’s press conference. The dead SLA members would later be identified as: Nancy Ling Perry, age 26; Angela Atwood, age 25; William Wolfe, age 23; Donald DeFreeze aka: Cinque, age 30; Patricia Soltysik, age 24; and Camilla Hall, age 29 years.

The seventies had been the "Age of Aquarius," social activists, anti-Vietnam War protestors, political and civil rights activists, the Chicago Eight and the SLA. Twenty-five years later, the racially mixed SLA is still remembered for the night they went out in a "blaze of glory" for their beliefs, in one of the most dramatic police confrontations in the annals of police history. The SLA, which had holed up unnoticed in the Bay Area, met their "Waterloo" in South Central Los Angeles, when "rich white girls with guns" running through alleys stood out, fatally blowing their cover. Patricia Hearst and the Harris’s eventually would be caught in San Francisco’s Mission district on Sept. 18, 1975. Following an eight-week trial for bank robbery and weapons charges, Patricia was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison, a sentence ultimately commuted by then President, Jimmy Carter. She married her bodyguard, a San Francisco policeman, became a housewife and mother and tried to slip quietly into history. Her mother, Catherine, who had been targeted by an assassin in June 1972, divorced Patricia’s father in 1978. On December 30, 1989, one month short of twenty-five years after her daughter’s kidnapping, she died. A few weeks later, FBI Agent Bates, who was in charge of the San Francisco investigation, died. Lt. Joe Sonlitner, in charge of SWAT, had already passed away on November 4, 1977. The bomb and ammunitions expert, Detective Arleigh McCree, was killed on February 8, 1986, in a bomb explosion. LAPD’s Chief of Police, Ed Davis, would retire and become a California State Senator. Ass’t. Chief Gates became Chief. Captain King, who was in charge of the SLA investigation, retired. Newton Division’s watch commander that night, Lt. Pat McKinley, went to SWAT and eventually became Chief of Police in Fullerton, California. Of course, the house at 1466 E. 54th St. is gone, and all that remains is a palm tree in a vacant lot and ghosts.