On Memorial Day, May 29, 1972, Jessie Burford West—a female resident of Raleigh—was shot during a sniper attack at North Hills Mall. Contemporary reconstructions and reporting place Mrs. West near the main entrance, where an assailant fired repeatedly from between parked cars at people entering and exiting the mall. She was described as being struck at the curb by the entrance while others nearby were killed or wounded in the opening moments of the shooting. Mrs.
West was transported to Wake Memorial Hospital and remained unconscious and in critical condition in intensive care for several days. She died of her injuries at 1:55 a.m. on June 3, 1972. Sources that compile victim records list her as being 80 years old at the time of death; ethnicity is not stated in the available public reports.
The Memorial Day attack left three victims dead from gunfire and seven others injured. Among those killed were Jacquelyn D. “Jackie” Wharton and James G. Henry; Jessie Burford West succumbed days later from her wounds. A mass-casualty listing corroborates the date and location and includes Mrs. West among the deceased.
Police quickly identified the shooter as Harvey Glenn McLeod, a 22-year-old Raleigh man, who fired a. 22-caliber Marlin semi-automatic rifle in the mall’s front parking area. Witnesses and subsequent police reporting indicate that McLeod took deliberate aim at random victims and then turned the rifle on himself, dying at the scene as officers arrived. Because the suspect died by suicide on May 29, 1972, there were no arrests in connection with Mrs. West’s killing. Investigators from Raleigh Police, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI processed the scene; autopsy findings reported no drugs or alcohol in McLeod’s system.
Later historical accounts and victim registries align on the basic sequence and outcomes: Jessie Burford West was shot on May 29, 1972, at North Hills Mall in Raleigh and died on June 3, 1972, of those injuries; the attack was perpetrated by a single identified gunman who died at the scene, leaving no living suspect to arrest.
Note on conflicting details: some web listings loosely associate all four deaths with May 29, 1972, for event dating; detailed hospital records and historical write-ups specify that Mrs. West died five days later, on June 3, 1972. Age references that list 77 appear inconsistent with grave and historical sources citing approximately 80. Ethnicity is not specified in the contemporaneous reports reviewed.
