Video: 'On this day: Patty Hearst abducted by armed radicals'

(Monday, February 4, 1974, 9:30 p.m. PST) — In one of the most famous kidnappings in U.S. history, three members of the left-wing terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army tonight kidnapped 19-year-old Patty Hearst, a granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, from her apartment at 2603 Benvenue Avenue, in Berkeley, California.

Two African-American men (one of whom was Donald DeFreeze) and a white woman invaded the apartment of Hearst, a sophomore at the University of California.

Hearst’s fiancé Steven Weed and a neighbor were beaten, and gunshots were fired at nearby witnesses as the group loaded Hearst into the trunk of a car in the apartment’s parking garage.

Hearst’s kidnapping was partly opportunistic, as she resided near the SLA hideout.

Video: 'Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst documentary'

According to testimony at trial, the group’s main intention was to leverage the Hearst family’s political influence to free SLA members Russ Little and Joe Remiro, who had been arrested for the November 1973 murder of Marcus Foster, superintendent of Oakland public schools.

After the state refused to free the men, the SLA demanded that Hearst’s family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian, an operation that would cost an estimated $400 million.

In response, Hearst’s father obtained a loan and arranged the immediate donation of $2 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area for one year in a project called People in Need.

After the distribution descended into chaos, the SLA refused to release Hearst.

The SLA was a small, American militant far-left organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement.

The FBI and wider American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the first terrorist organization to rise from the American left.