Date: Wed Jul 28 20:09:44 1999 From: jeb@BBZ.NET (John Briggs) Subject: Texas Tower sniper on NBC To: AZRKBA@asu.edu
NBC Dateline just ran a long segment on the 1966 University of Texas sniper incident (Charles Whitman) that I would give a B+, heck an A- to. Noting that when Whitman opened fire police found they had no firearms capable of reaching the the observation deck of the UT tower 28 floors up Dateline stated that police officers went home to get their rifles while civilians called to offer support and showed up with their own rifles and provided suppressive fire. In fact, at one point they referred to this as a civilian militia. On the downside they identified all these as hunting rifles, deer rifles, and the like. I don't know if anyone turned out with their '03 Springfield or M1 Garand.
Later, they interviewed the two Austin police officers who independently decided they had to do something and advanced to the tower and made there way to the top. I knew that a civilian had been involved in the clearing of the observation deck but Dateline made no mention of this in their teasers. Eventually, however, they reported that when the first officer got off at the last floor served by the elevator he encountered a surviving civilian who asked for a gun and offered to help, saying his family had been killed. Together, the officer and the civilian moved up the stairs that led to the observation deck door. Frankly, it was not completely clear if this was the same civilian because Dateline, while referring to the police officers by name, never identified the civilan and referred to him as carrying a rifle without saying where this rifle had come from.
The story gets a little confusing here because they jumped forward to where the second officer arrived at just as the first officer and the civikian were about to got through the door to the deck. While the second officer said there was at this point no time for a plan they did manage to get something organized. After forcing the door open (it was blocked by a dolly the gunman had used to transport his footlocker full of guns and supplies) the two officers went left while the stayed civilian at the door and covered the opposite direction. Dateline said that eventually, as the officers moved around the tower the civilian let off a round by mistake prompting the officers to move quickly to find the sniper which they did, killing him at twenty yards or so with a .38 and a 12 gauge.
In all, much better coverage than I expected from NBC. I don't know why they didn't identify and directly credit the civilian and give his story and I don't know how nervous his shot was but otherwise I must give NBC good marks on this one. I was prepared for the worst when I saw the segment start.
John E. Briggs jeb@bbz.net Phoenix, Arizona, USA