A place as mythologized as Disneyland comes with a lot of rumors: that there are real human skeletons inside Pirates of the Caribbean, that Walt Disney’s head is cryogenically frozen, awaiting revival someday in the future, and, perhaps most persistently, that no one dies at Disneyland.

According to urban legend, Disney brass finds death incompatible with the happiest place on Earth, so when people expire on the premises, they are sent to hospitals for the official death declaration. The legend, while famous enough for a Snopes page, is easily dismissed. There are quite a few instances of death at Disneyland, sometimes witnessed by other guests. But what’s rarely explored is the 1981 tragedy that likely sparked the legend and marked the first homicide in the park’s history.

On the evening of March 7, 1981, guests streamed into Disneyland for a private party around 10,000 tickets were distributed that was held by Rohr, the Southern California aerospace manufacturing company. Among the guests was 18-year-old Mel C. Yorba, whose father worked at Rohr. Near the Matterhorn, Yorba crossed paths with 28-year-old James O’Driscoll, who was attending the party with his girlfriend. The woman told O’Driscoll that a strange man had pinched her. Furious, O’Driscoll turned to Yorba, who he believed was the man his girlfriend was referring to.

The two men scuffled, ending up near the Submarine Voyage ride, and Yorba was stabbed in the heart. Security guards rushed to the scene and found Yorba bleeding to death. According to media reports, Yorba may have been bleeding for as long as 20 minutes before a consequential decision was made: Instead of calling 911, Yorba was picked up and put into a Disneyland van, accompanied by two security guards and the nurse. Without lights, sirens or even lifesaving equipment, the van drove through city streets to a hospital in Garden Grove. Two trauma centers, which were better equipped to handle a stabbing, were missed.

An Orange County coroner would later find that Yorba was already in cardiac arrest when he arrived at the hospital. There was nothing that could be done. It was the first homicide in the history of Disneyland Park.

Public outrage was immediate and unprecedented: In a city where the government tends to align with the most powerful corporation in town, Anaheim officials were remarkably outspoken. Both the Anaheim Fire Department and Orange County’s Office of Emergency Medical Services went public with their frustrations.

“We’ve been talking to people at Disneyland about this for years,” Martel Thompson, the Anaheim Fire Department’s chief of operations, told the Los Angeles Times. “Something like this is pretty hard to swallow, especially when we had a station just one minute away. Our medical unit was three minutes away.”

Another official who had worked in the county’s Office of Emergency Medical Services told the LA Times that Disneyland employees also failed to call paramedics for a prior medical episode in the park. “We went and talked to them and the city of Anaheim tried,” he said. “We didn’t get anywhere. They (Disneyland) decided the paramedics and the hoopla that comes with it would upset the tenor of the park.”

Multiple officials “said Disneyland’s reluctance to summon paramedics was based on the fear that their arrival would mar the park’s image,” the outlet reported.

About a month after Yorba’s death, his family members filed a wrongful death lawsuit, seeking $60 million in damages from Disneyland. The case eventually went to an Orange County jury, which took three hours of deliberation and ended up agreeing with Yorba’s family.

Although they ultimately were awarded $600,000 in damages, far less than what they’d hoped for, Yorba’s family felt vindicated.

“We knew we owed it to Mel to have this brought out so it can’t possibly ever happen to anybody else again,” his mother Ellen Reynolds said after the verdict. “Now everybody knows we were right.”

O’Driscoll was also held to account for his actions that night. In the chaos after the stabbing, he fled into the park, where he was discovered by security about an hour later hiding in the bushes of Adventureland. Through two trials, one of which was thrown out after the jury deadlocked, O’Driscoll maintained that the stabbing was accidental; in his account, he did have a knife in his hand but didn’t mean to stab Yorba. While they were fighting, O’Driscoll said Yorba fell onto the knife, inflicting the fatal blow.

In 1983, a jury found O’Driscoll guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Today, the most common fire truck sighted inside Disneyland is a historic one, driven up and down Main Street for the entertainment of guests. But when disaster strikes, you can now expect to see real-life first responders: In 2023, a light pole fell on multiple guests in the park, and the Anaheim Fire Department was called promptly to the scene.

One person needed to be transported to a hospital for their injuries, which came via emergency responders not a Disneyland employee in an unmarked van.