James Walter Welsh was a 75-year-old white man from Waco, Texas, killed on October 16, 1991, at the Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen. He was among 23 people shot that day when the attacker drove a pickup truck through the restaurant’s front window and opened fire on patrons and staff, also wounding 20 others.

Welsh had served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II and was remembered by family and friends as kind and loving. The attack on the cafeteria prompted widespread community mourning, memorials for the victims, and public debate about gun laws and mental health in the aftermath.