Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #True Crime, #Murder, #test

A Sniper in the Tower (52 page)

Page 174

At 12:20
P.M.
, Melvin Hees of Armored Motor Service was working in his office in the Capitol National Bank Building and was unaware of the tragedy unfolding at the university. A friend interrupted him and inquired as to whether Hees's armored cars would be useful in removing wounded victims still pinned downed by Whitman's murderous gunfire. Hees immediately located one of the cars and got it to the campus by 12:35
P.M.
It was used to evacuate at least two victims, David Gunby and Adrian Littlefield. It probably saved their lives; both young men were sent to emergency surgery upon their arrival at Brackenridge Hospital.

The armored car drivers had been assisted by an off-duty APD Patrolman named Charles Baylor. Baylor had reached 21st and Guadalupe at about 12:20
P.M.
and entered the campus. He moved behind several buildings towards the South Mall where he saw six people (including Charlotte Darenshori) pinned down by gunfire. Using his personal rifle he returned fire about fifty times. He then laid down the rifle, and with two unidentified men, ran across the South Mall to rescue a man lying behind a hedge on the west side. The men lifted the man (probably Devereau Huffman) over a wall and into the arms of others. It was an incredibly courageous act. Afterwards, Baylor ran to the armored car and assisted Sergeant Ernie Hinkle in loading two of the wounded. Inside the car Adrian Littlefield's head rested upon a makeshift pillow made of a money bag containing deposit slips. "My wife," he moaned. Inside the Computation Center, Detective Ed Silvange was with Brenda Littlefield, who did not want to be moved out of the building.
¹¹

Officer Ramiro Martinez drove from his south Austin home to the campus area and parked his rather old car on the 2000 block of San Antonio Street, just one block west of Guadalupe. He had been instructed to report for traffic duty, but after parking his car and running through the grounds of Saint Austin's Catholic Church, he reached 21st and Guadalupe and saw no traffic. Two blocks south of that intersection, at 19th and Guadalupe, students had already halted traffic. Detective John Pope later replaced the students and then would be relieved by Patrolmen Albert Hersom, Jim Beck, and Al

Page 175

Riley. As Hersom turned away traffic, an unidentified man gave him a bullet-proof vest for protection. Hersom would never be able to locate the man to return the vest. Pope moved closer to the campus to keep civilians out of the line of fire. Martinez crossed Guadalupe and entered the campus grounds. Like Charles Baylor, he used the cover of buildings to reach the South Mall. He, too, saw six persons lying there. Martinez decided to go to the source; he headed for the deck.
¹²

Patrolman Bob Day had already made it to the Tower. Earlier in the morning while patrolling East 8th Street he had heard the calls to support Houston McCoy. He proceeded to Benedict Hall on the southeast corner of the South Mall next to the Littlefield Fountain. He worked his way up to Batts Hall and across Inner Campus Drive from the quadrangle. As he stood at the Batts Auditorium doorway, two shots landed near him. From Batts Hall he ran across Inner Campus Drive to the wall beneath the statue of Woodrow Wilson. Looking over the wall through the decorative balusters, he saw bodies on the pavement and people hiding behind trees. Day yelled to everyone within earshot to stay away from windows and doors. And then, clutching his shotgun, Bob Day made a dash through the upper terrace past Claire Wilson, Thomas Eckman, and David Gunby. He ran through Whitman's gunfire by zigzagging. Shots landed about six feet to both the right and left of the dodging policeman. Norma Barger watched from her office in Stark Library: "I saw a policeman running across the open area and you could see the sniper's gun picking up cement dust right behind him."
¹³

Once inside, Day rested for a moment to catch his breath then told everyone to stay inside. He discovered that he was the first policeman to enter the Main Building. When he asked students for the best way to get to the top, they directed him to the stairway. Officer Day told the students to lock the door behind him; there was no coming back. He stopped on the third floor and entered room 316 where he asked to use a phone to call the station for further instructions. While he was waiting to get through, a woman told him that he could get a decent shot at the sniper from the office window. He looked out, saw the sniper, and emptied his revolver. Shortly, APD was on the phone. Lieutenant Charles Barnett

Page 176

instructed him to stay at his position and someone would try to get a rifle to him. Bob Day waited.
¹⁴

Meanwhile, another Officer Day, a twenty-seven-year-old, two-year rookie and an Air Force veteran, Jerry Day, had parked his unit in an alley west of Guadalupe Street. He saw three men desperately trying to help Claudia Rutt. Jerry ran across Guadalupe and used the buildings on the north side of the West Mall to circle the Main Building to the south entrance. Once inside, an employee took him to the elevator where Allen Crum approached Day and insisted upon helping. There the two men spoke bluntly Day pointed out that Crum was unarmed and could get shot. Crum insisted that they go together. Then a Department of Public Safety (DPS) Intelligence Officer named W. A. Cowan arrived with a rifle and a pistol. He handed Crum the rifle.
¹⁵

Outside, Ramiro Martinez decided to make a run for the Main Building through the quadrangle. He, too, used a zigzag pattern to run past the dead and wounded, but he does not know if Whitman ever shot at him. "I just ran like hell!" he later reported. Once inside, Martinez tried calling the police station to get ambulances and armored vehicles to remove the dead and wounded, but by this time APD, and Austin phone lines in general, were jammed. Jerry Day, Allen Crum and W. A. Cowan had taken the elevator to the twenty-sixth floor. From there they took the stairs to the twenty-seventh floor, where they had difficulty establishing communications with Chief Hamilton of UT Security.
¹⁶

Houston McCoy left the student with the fancy scoped rifle in the English Building and headed back to his squad car on 21st Street. He told the student to move from one window to another so that Whitman could not locate the source of the return fire. From 21st Street, Houston drove to Guadalupe, turned north, and sped to 24th Street where he encountered men from Criminal Investigations Division (CID). McCoy asked about any plans for getting the sniper. They did not know of any. Shortly afterwards, another student emerged with a 30.30 rifle, but he needed ammunition so McCoy took him to Everett Hardware. The instructions for this student were

Page 177

the same as those given to the student with the fancy rifle"shoot to kill."

Two blocks north another officer encountered difficulty, but not from the sniper. A city bus driver foolishly insisted on proceeding with his route through the Drag. As McCoy would later say, he disregarded the rules of good public relations, and in earthy language, told the driver he had two options: stay there or turn around. Afterwards, McCoy returned to his unit and heard the APD dispatcher call for volunteers to meet other APD and UT Security officers at UT's police station off San Jacinto Boulevard.
¹⁷He sped away from the Drag to become part of a team being assembled to storm the Tower.

The Drag continued to be a killing field. In front of Sheftall's Jewelers, on the corner of 23rd and Guadalupe, three friends named David Mattson, Roland Ehlke, and Tom Herman were walking to a luncheon for Peace Corps volunteers. It was the same luncheon Thomas Ashton was to attend. They did not know their new friend had just been murdered as he strolled the roof of the Computation Center. David Mattson was a twenty-three-year-old native of Minneapolis; Roland Ehlke a twenty-one-year-old native of Milwaukee; nothing further is known about Tom Herman. Mattson, Ehlke, and Herman were training, along with Thomas Ashton, to go to Iran in mid-September. The sequence of events is not clear, but Mattson and Ehlke were hit with the same bullet. Ehlke was wounded in the right arm and was wounded again in the other arm and in both legs as he attempted to help Mattson. Mattson's right wrist was shattered by the sniper's bullet. Inside Sheftall's, the store manager, Homer J. Kelley, witnessed the strange movements outside on the sidewalk. Sheftall employees were skeptical as they watched the three boys attempt to crawl into the store: "We [were] across the street from a big university and I wasn't about to fall for that. And then I saw bloodso much blood."

As other Sheftall employees cried for him to be careful, the kindly, sixty-four-year-old Homer Kelley helped the wounded boys into the store. As bullets flew all around him, he stayed next to one of the wounded even as more rounds crashed through the front window of the store, tearing gashes in the carpet and wounding him in the leg.

Page 178

Now Mr. Kelley was one of the wounded. He would arrive at Brackenridge Hospital with the boys he had helped.
¹⁸

Three blocks north, at the A & E Barbershop at 2535 Guadalupe, Billy Snowden, a basketball coach for the Texas School for the Deaf, sat in the barber's chair and watched the shop's TV as his hair was being cut. Snowden, the barber, and a couple of other customers walked to the doorway and looked towards the Tower. Snowden recalled: "We thought at first that we better get back inside, but then decided we were too far away to get hit. I was standing in the door and had it about half open. The barber was standing beside me." They were so far away they did not know that Charles Whitman was looking right back at them. As a bullet went through Snowden, it tore three major nerves. His shoulder went numb. One year later Billy Snowden would be hard on himself. "What a stupid mistake, being outside, since I knew they were shooting from the Tower."
¹⁹But the distance was extraordinary Of all the victims, Snowden was the farthest from the Towerwell beyond 500 yards.

Just south, on the northwest corner of 24th and Guadalupe, a group of as many as eight people gathered to try to get some idea of what was going on. Not surprisingly, Whitman zeroed in on them. One of the group, Lana Phillips, an attractive, freckled-faced, twenty-one-year-old senior majoring in music, was employed in Rae Ann's Dress Shop on the Drag. After the shooting started, she walked outside. She later stated:


I wasn't scared until I got shot. I was watching the Tower and watching people get shot. I didn't think I was within range, plus, I was standing behind some other people and I thought they would get shot before I would; I was wrong.

Whitman directed a rapid succession of shots into the group, probably with the 30-caliber automatic, and before they could scatter to safety, he sent a bullet into Lana's back right shoulder. During a lull in the shooting Lana's sister, who had witnessed the shooting from the Student Union across the street, ran across the Drag to help load Lana into an ambulance. Nearby, twenty-one-year-old Sandra Wilson fell to the sidewalk, seriously wounded in the chest.
²⁰

Other books

Crossing The Line by Katie McGarry

Almost Always: A Love Unexpected Novel by Adams, Alissa

BEAST: A Bad Boy Marine Romance by Alana Albertson

Dixie Diva Blues by Virginia Brown

Catching Hell: A Hot Contemporary Romance by Mindy Klasky

The Prettiest Feathers by John Philpin

Alpha Champion (Wolf Fighters Book 1) by Bolryder, Terry

Face by Brighton, Bridget

Heroes' Reward by Moira J. Moore

Charger the Soldier by Lea Tassie