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 (56 page)

BOOK: A Sniper in the Tower

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Page 191

As Oscar Royvela, a twenty-one-year-old native Bolivian on a good neighbor scholarship, and Irma Garcia, a twenty-one-year-old student from Harlingen, walked south of Hogg Auditorium, heading north towards the biology lab, Charles Whitman aimed and fired. Garcia was shot first. "I felt myself reeling. The bullet turned me completely around." Her wound was to the left shoulder. As Royvela instinctively tried to help her, he too was shot. The round entered his left shoulder blade and exited under and through his left arm. Nearby, Jack Stephens and Jack Pennington dashed around a corner and ran through the open area to grab the couple by the feet and drag them to safety. Their heroism was not lost on Royvela, who one year later commented: "I want to remember the kindness of many persons who in one way or another did help me during the critical time. I shall always remember with affection all that the wonderful American people did."
²⁸

Avelino Esparza, twenty-six, worked nearby as a carpenter at the construction site of a new post office. As he was walking back to work, Whitman fired a round into his left arm near the shoulder. It shattered the bone in his upper arm. His brother and uncle risked their lives to drag him to safety. Esparza would later be admitted to Brackenridge in serious condition.
²⁹

It became difficult, if not impossible, to determine exactly how many people were wounded by the rounds fired from the guns of Charles Whitman. Many dozens more were wounded by fragments and flying limestone, concrete, and glass. Included among these victims were Della and Marina Martinez, two visitors from Monterrey, Mexico, who were hit by shell fragments; Delores Ortega, a thirty-year-old student and resident of UT's Kinsolving Dorm, who was cut on the back of her head by broken glass; undoubtedly, many dozens more could be counted as wounded. There were others who suffered from related injuries like heat exhaustion and extreme sunburns. Other students fell and hurt themselves as they ran in terror. But as the shooting continued, so did the heroism.
³⁰

The University of Texas Chancellor Harry Ransom, trapped in his office in the Tower, found solace in the heroism of many university students. He witnessed young adults, arguably children, running through gunfire to rescue the wounded. It was, as Ransom said, "incredible and heartlifting." Newsreel footage captured young men in

Page 192

white shirts (excellent targets) dashing around the corners of buildings and over grassy areas and walkways. Others reached victims, lifted them, and walked slowly towards the safety of a tree or wall. Witnesses prayed for the sniper to be on the other side of the deck or to have mercy on the slow-moving heroes. In many cases arms and legs dangled as rescuers moved lifeless bodies. Reporter Charles Ward would later document the story of Brehan Ellison, a Vietnam veteran who moved two people away from the deadly fire, one of whom later died.
³¹

A twenty-two-year-old UT student and pharmacy major, Clif Drummond, and his friend Bob Higley walked along the Drag amid the strange noises. As Drummond remembered:


I was meandering along when I heard two shots. At first I thought the noise was from workmen on the Tower; they're always up there. Then I saw people looking up and I saw some running and screaming. I still didn't believe it was happening until puffs of smoke floated from the Tower. Then people began to fall and I realized I was an easy target.

After realizing what was going on, Drummond, President of the UT Student Body and the 1964 state co-chairman of Young Citizens for Lyndon Johnson, ran into the Student Union where his office was housed and retrieved some laboratory coats for use as bandages. He also took off his coat and tie and slipped off his shoesthe smooth leather soles of dress shoes slipped on hot pavement, making running difficult. Then, he ran out of the building through an exit away from the line of fire. Immediately, he and Higley spotted Paul Sonntag leaning against a parking meter across the street. The young men dashed across the street toward Sonntag, and as Higley recalled later: ''we got out from under the overhang of the buildings, Whitman could pick us up. And he found us and started shooting at us." Drummond and Higley crawled behind cars as Whitman continued to fire. Unlike many others, the young men took into consideration the angle from which the sniper fired and stayed low and close to the cars. Higley continued:

Page 193


Then we got down behind a car and I could reach up, and got the student and pulled him towards me. He apparently looked up at the Tower at the time and [had] been shot in the throat. There was no visible sign of injury, but when he came down, it was very apparent he was dead.

The two brave young men cradled the body of Paul Sonntag until an ambulance arrived and took him away.
³²

After removing Sonntag, Drummond and Higley pulled another man off the street and carried two wounded girls into a building. Soon they joined an ambulance crew and assisted in the loading of more victims. They continued their work as bullets ripped into nearby construction barriers and as the hot pavement began to burn and eat away at Drummond's bare feet. "I threw the lab coats on the pavement to stand on, but they were full of blood after a while and didn't do much," he remembered.
³³

Two weeks after the incident, the
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
reported that a nineteen-year-old carpenter named Bill Davis (one of the two men who rescued Morris Hohmann), even after repeated warnings from his boss, continued to rush out into the street to save two victims. Finally, his boss warned him to stop or he'd be fired. Davis ran out again and was later fired for lack of discipline. Orville Jansen, a workman at the Texas Theater, carried a wounded girl from the Drag to an ambulance in the alley behind some stores. He was exposed to Whitman's fire. Glenn Johnson and Alfred Gallessich, both teenagers, attempted to help the wounded along the sidewalk of the Drag. They could tell if the victims were in trouble, because their fingers turned blue.
³⁴

At the Student Health Center, Dr. Robert C. Stokes received a call at 12:05
P.M.
to go to the Tower. He and another employee, Evelyn Anderson, rode in an ambulance to the north side of Hogg Auditorium where Jack Stephens and lack Pennington had dragged Oscar Royvela and Irma Garcia to safety. After Dr. Stokes treated them, an ambulance arrived to take the patients away. Dr. Stokes established contact with campus security and then moved to an adjacent building where he administered first aid to Ellen Evganides. From there a university employee guided the doctor through tunnels under the South Mall to the Computation Center where he exam-

Page 194

ined Brenda Littlefield, who was not seriously injured. From there, Dr. Stokes proceeded to the Tower.
³⁵

Mary, Mike, and Mark Gabour and Marguerite Lamport were still lying on the narrow stairway between the twenty-seventh floor and the reception area on the twenty-eighth floor of the Tower. Mark and Marguerite were dead; Mike and Mary were critically wounded and helpless. Shortly after the shooting, M. J. Gabour and William Lamport had tried to move them to safety. They succeeded in moving Mark down the hallway and they placed Marguerite next to him. When they tried to move Mike, his pain was unbearable and he asked to be left alone. Later Mike tried to move himself. It was then he realized that he was paralyzed along the left side of his body. As he tried to get around Mary, he kept falling and ended up on top of his mother's head. Mary had trouble breathing. At first Mike thought Mary was dead, too. He said prayers, but soon he began to get angry and to curse the man who shot him and his family. But Mary had not raised Mike that way; she gathered enough strength to admonish her son, "Mike, don't say all those bad things."

Mike now knew his mother was still alive. "Mom, are you alright?" he asked.

"Yes, darling, I'm fine," she answered. "Someone will help us soon."

Mike kept talking and encouraging his mother to keep her eyes open and talk. He figured that if either one of them stopped they would die. And then Mike warned his mother to do precisely the opposite. He heard a door opening, followed by slow, methodical footsteps. He told his mother to play dead.
³⁶

1
Austin American-Statesman
, 7 August 1966, 30 July 1967, 1 August 1986; Norma Barger quoted in
Dallas Morning News
, 2 August 1966.

2 APD Files:
SOR
by J. Cooney, 3 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 7 August 1966.

3 Fahrenthold and Rider,
Admissions
, p. 82;
Austin American-Statesman
, 2 and 3 August 1966.

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