Can you imagine if every yahoo with a gun showed up at a bank robbery standoff?
I can.
Charles Whitman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the criminal Charles J. Whitman. For the politician, please see Charles S. Whitman...
...Six tourists who were heading up the stairs moments later were not so fortunate. As the two teenaged boys in the group opened the deck area door from the stairway, Whitman met them with a blast from his illegally-fashioned sawed-off shotgun. The gunfire sent them tumbling back down the stairs to a landing. Of the six, two died and two others had permanent injuries. The two men in the group, who were at the foot of the stairs when the shot rang out, were not hit. One of them was crazed with desire for revenge, while the other was numbed with shock...
A history professor who had an office in Garrison Hall, overlooking the Main Mall, saw the first victims drop to the ground just south of the tower and immediately phoned the Austin police department. His call was followed by a flurry of similar phone messages from other horrified campus-area employees and students clamoring for police help and medical assistance.
The murderous rampage sparked panic among residents in Austin as news spread on the local media and by word of mouth. Ramiro Martinez, an Austin police officer, was cooking himself lunch and readying for his afternoon shift when he heard a bulletin on KTBC-TV from newsman Joe Roddy. He immediately called police headquarters to see if he could help and was told to go without delay to the campus area and assist with traffic control. As the drama played out, he was one of the two officers who would fire the final shots at Whitman. His on-duty colleague Houston McCoy had received the primary call to proceed to campus minutes before. When the magnitude of what was happening became apparent, every officer on duty was ordered to the campus.
Had Whitman arrived on the deck slightly later, he would have been in time for summer session lunch hour foot traffic as classes let out--the number of potential victims would have been greatly increased. As it happened his prey was limited to stragglers. The victims were young to old, male and female, and his accuracy was astounding; two hits found their mark more than 450 yards away from the tower. The worst killing zone, as far of numbers of people hit, was Guadalupe Street (known as "The Drag"), which is still the major shopping, food service, and business district across from the west side of the campus.
Local Secret Service agents from the Johnson administration as well as sheriff's department officers, Department of Public Safety officers, Austin police and campus police came to assist at the scene, but Whitman was well barricaded on the deck. In fact, as later observers said, the deck was tailor made for a madman like Whitman. During the latter part of his rampage, he was using the drainspouts located on each side to fire through, making him virtually impossible to hit from the ground.
As word went out, many students and area residents with high powered deer rifles loaded their their weapons and ran to campus to return fire. Students, bystanders and campus area employees performed heroic acts to drag or carry wounded victims to safety where they could be picked up by ambulances, risking their own lives.
In 1966, Austin did not have a 911 system or city-operated ambulances. The ambulances were run by the funeral homes. Many funeral home employees risked their lives in the effort to save victims. One, Morris Hohmann, from Hyltin-Manor Funeral Home, was working on the Drag to load up victims at the corner of West 23rd Street at the height of the rampage. He had ducked and was moving along behind his firm's ambulance, which was turning the corner slowly to the west and Whitman saw him as his cover disappeared. Whitman's shot hit his leg, ripping open a major artery. As his damaged limb ballooned in size, he had to use his own belt as a tourniquet on it to keep from bleeding to death. He was soon loaded into his own ambulance and rushed to the Brackenridge ER along with many others who had been jammed into in the vehicle. He survived and became a respected funeral director at Hyltin-Manor.
Austin only had one full-scale emergency room at that time--in Brackenridge Hospital--a city run facility on IH 35 about ten blocks south of the UT area. It quickly became overtaxed with victims. Doctors, nurses, and medical technicians raced there from all parts of the city to reinforce the on-duty staff. The lines at the city blood center on IH 35 and at Brackenridge itself stretched for blocks as citizens lined up to donate their life fluid. One victim said that people were laid in a row on the emergency room hallway floor "like cordwood." Nurses and other personnel strived to treat the most seriously wounded first. Later reports showed that the totally over-extended staff did a magnificent job and saved many lives. Legend has it that in the aftermath, one exhausted and distraught nurse who had maintained professional composure through the whole ordeal broke down crying and threw her blood-soaked shoes in the trash.
Law enforcement officials tried to distract or even shoot Whitman by flying around the tower in a small airplane commandeered from a local air park. The plan to fire at him from the plane was abandoned when it became obvious that a stray bullet could hit innocent people in upper offices/classrooms in the tower. Whitman actually fired at the airplane. The officer on board suddenly realized the predicament he would be in if the pilot was hit, because he had no flying experience. But the officer did provide useful communications to ground personnel about Whitman's movements throughout the incident and he was able to confirm that there was only one shooter. Austin police contacted nearby Bergstrom Air Force Base about bringing in an armed helicopter to aid in the assault effort, but the problem of hitting the wrong people was the same.
One of the most poignant events in the madness happened when Paul Bolton, then the dean of Austin broadcast news who was anchoring the KTBC-am (now KLBJ-am) coverage, heard a list of the dead being read on-air by Joe Roddy, one of his reporters. Roddy, who broke the story on KTBC-TV, was in a remote unit at the Brackenridge Hospital ER. Bolton interrupted and requested that Roddy reread a name on the list. Bolton said, "that's my grandson." Indeed, the named victim was Paul Sonntag, Bolton's grandson, who was shot along with his girl friend Claudia Rutt on the Drag. Sonntag had instantly died. Rutt also died from a lung injury after admittance at the ER.
Back at the Austin police station, the two men who ran the switchboard were deluged with calls from the campus area begging for help as victims were pulled into stores and classroom buildings. In addition, as word spread nationwide, news organzations ranging from radio stations in Texas to the national networks in New York City were phoning and demanding information. These calls were put off, since the two operators had no way of dealing with them and the backlog of crucial pleas for assistance was growing by the minute.
The attacks continued until the observation deck was stormed by volunteers who took it upon themselves to stop the killing. Two armed APD officers, Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez, along with a temporarily deputized private citizen, Allan Crum, crept out onto the observation deck to confront Whitman with their weapons, while a group of additional law enforcement officials stayed inside the top floor to communicate to police headquarters, provide backup fire, and help wounded civilians. Crum, a retired military officer, was the security director of the University Co-op, the main campus bookstore, on Guadalupe Street. His usual activities during the day were limited to catching shoplifters and maintaining order in the store. Later accounts confirmed that he was instrumental in organizing the effort to subdue Whitman.
Crum, Martinez and McCoy slowly ventured out of the southeast side door onto the observation deck around 1:15. The deputized Crum headed west on the south side with a rifle he had been given by one of the law enforcement officers. Dodging "friendly fire" from the ground, Martinez and McCoy turned the corner to their left and made it to the northeast corner of the observation deck. There they saw Whitman in the northwest corner, directly across from them. He was in a sniper's crouch, pointing his rifle to the south, towards where he thought he would be threatened. First, Martinez emptied his .38 revolver at him, distracting Whitman and making it impossible for him to lower and aim his rifle back towards the police officers. Then the 6'4" McCoy raised up behind Martinez and fired two rounds from his shotgun, hitting Whitman in the head. With that, Martinez grabbed McCoy's shotgun and unleashing a frenzied scream, ran all the way down to Whitman, who had collapsed. He drilled another round into the sniper's head, point blank. Martinez then grabbed a towel that Whitman had laid nearby and leaping up, waved it in a rapid circle to let ground level shooters know that the nightmare was over.
Soon, everyone on campus knew that fact as well. Like lemmings to the sea, hundreds of people who had been holed up in classrooms and stores scrambled towards the campus. When the word spread to the Brackenridge ER that the sniper had been killed, a macabre cry of elation went up from the injured waiting for treatment. (Emphasis added)
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