AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. – The deadliest shooting in Spokane County’s history took place 30 years ago at Fairchild Air Force Base and ultimately helped George Nethercutt (R) unseat US House Speaker Tom Foley (D).
Dean A. Mellberg, a 20-year-old psychologically disturbed Air Force mechanic, had been recommended for discharge by two mental health officials at the base in the weeks before the June 20, 1994 shooting.
Mellberg entered the base’s hospital with a duffel bag containing a Chinese MAK-90 semiautomatic rifle he purchased from a Spokane gun dealer.
He walked into the shared office of psychiatrist Major Thomas Brigham and psychologist Captain Alan London and shot each man, beginning a rampage that killed two more people and injured 23.
It was a painful day for the base alongside the wider Spokane County community and would prove consequential in national politics.
Foley, who had represented Spokane since the mid ‘60s, supported a federal assault weapons ban following the Fairchild shooting. That ban became law in late 1994 but was allowed to lapse a decade later.
His support for an assault weapons ban drew the ire of the National Rifle Association, who spent about $300,000 supporting his opponent Nethercutt.
Nethercutt ultimately beat Foley in the 1994 election, unseating the only US House Speaker ever to come from Spokane and ushering in a new era of firearm-friendly conservative politics under new Speaker Newt Gingrich.
