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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Saturday, May 12, 2001

Victim's son calls Timothy McVeigh 'a coward'

Advertiser Staff

Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday postponed the convicted Oklahoma City bomber's lethal injection until June 11 and ordered the Justice Department's inspector general to investigate why thousands of FBI documents weren't provided as promised to McVeigh's legal team before trial.

Hawai'i's Peter Avillanoza was one of 168 victims of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The 1956 graduate of Kaimuki High School and former Honolulu police officer and firefighter moved to Oklahoma to become state director of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development's Equal Opportunity Division.

Victor Avillanoza, one of Peter Avillanoza's six children, initially did not want to comment on the decision to delay the execution of McVeigh, who was convicted of the attack. But Avillanoza, a career Navy SEAL, called McVeigh, a former Marine, a "coward and traitor of the United States of America."

"I'm ashamed to even have him serve in the same military as me because people like that in time of war would have got shot," Avillanoza said. "I have a lot of feelings and animosity, of course, towards the guy and his punk friend (co-conspirator Terry Nichols) that did all this."

Peter Avillanoza, 57, was one of the last victims found in the debris of the Murrah Federal Building. His body was in a pit created by the explosion and could not be recovered for 20 days.