University of Texas massacre - rarely brought up?

[holdencm9]

Every year people are injured and killed when guns are fired into the air during 4th of July and New Years, so the "little chance" is still very real and does actually happen, and certainly could have happened in the middle of Austin.

Could have. Did not.

See, again your perception of risk is the issue. I don't have the stats on number of people killed by bullets fired in the air, but it is tiny. Does it happen? Yes. Does it make the news? Yes. But it is still a tiny chance by any stretch of the word. Getting shot by someone in a tower who is shooting AT you is much higher. I know the mantra is every bullet has a lawyer attached to it, but come on. A few errant shots into the sky is better than a dozen aimed shots at innocents on the ground. Also, did we ever confirm there were errant shots of is that pure conjecture?

 

[jmace57]

My family (while returning from vacation) happened to go through Austin the day after, looking at the broken windows and chipped concrete in the stores along 6th Street. My Dad, who was an Army infantryman (and a sharpshooter) stood there looking up at the tower saying "those were some helluva shots". Pretty strong language from him.

 

[OptimusPrime]

I bring up Whitman with every fence-sitter that I come across. It's a horrific example of how a law isn't going to fix a darn thing, but better diagnosis of mental illness is. He didn't use anything fancy, or scary, machine guns or bayonet lugs or flash suppressors; just one crazy man with nothing to live for in his opinion. Hunting rifles and a shotgun and a vantage point, another lone wolf intent on holding out til the end. And that end was brought to him by brave armed men before it got worse than it was. Police and civilian armed men.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Could have.

That was my point given the accuracy of those shooting at him. Like you said, they didn't kill anybody, not even Whitman.

My family (while returning from vacation) happened to go through Austin the day after, looking at the broken windows and chipped concrete in the stores along 6th Street. My Dad, who was an Army infantryman (and a sharpshooter) stood there looking up at the tower saying "those were some helluva shots". Pretty strong language from him.

Roy Dell Schmidt was shot at over 500 yards and was killed. Billy Speed was shot through a 6" gap between to ballisters and was killed. Whitman did make some very shoot shots from 29 floors up. But he did have some luxuries including raised vantage point, protected position, capable weaponry, and the skills to use them.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/mass/whitman/tower_6.html

 

[Armybrat]

I was there too:

Memories of the Whitman shooting

I was there watching it from the NE corner of 21st & Whitis (the Dobie Mall building and the Ransom Center hadn't been built yet), which was a small parking lot at the time. The roomie & I walked out there after eating lunch in the Holiday House which fronted on the Drag. While eating, we had seen the ambulances howling up the street & wondered what was going on.

We heard a few "booms", then somebody yelled at us to get down...that "they" were shooting people from the Tower. Crouching behind a car, we could clearly see Whitman leaning over the parapet taking aim & firing downwards. Most of the time it was a loud "boom", but once in a while we heard a rapid "pop pop pop" - when he used his smaller M1 carbine. We could see the ricochets knocking sprays of stone off the parapet wall.

After a short while we could hear lots of return gunfire coming from nearby buildings & apartments. Hundreds of rounds were going off, so it sounded like a big firefight - similar to the 'Nam newsclips on tv. That's when he ducked down behind the wall and started shooting through the drain spouts. A small Cessna plane made a pass around the Tower, but veered off sharply - that's when Whitman fired at it (supposedly hitting it once).

This went on for a while longer, while some of us speculated that the shooter (s) would jump off the Tower to end it. Then all of a sudden we saw a white flag being waved above the wall. Like a bunch of idiots, hundreds of people, including us, rushed up to the Mall. By the time we got there, the dead & wounded had been removed by brave individuals under fire. There were numerous pools of blood all over the area, and the crowd meticulously avoided stepping in them. Next to the ground floor exit in the west side of the Tower the crowd was pretty thick. Some random sights there: A Daily Texan reporter with his notepad, press card...wearing a steel army helmet...a Texas Ranger holding upright a Thompson submachine gun...a student sitting up on the wall who shouted "Let's hang him when they bring him out" (didn't know he was dead at the time). Unknown to us, the bodies from the Tower were removed from the east entrance,

After an hour or so, there wasn't much to gawk at, and the stunned crowd thinned out, so we went back to our apartment and turned on our tv to watch the news reports. That's when we heard the well-known local news anchor, Paul Bolton, choke up when his grandson's name was read from the list of the dead. Remembering that personal tragedy still brings tears to my eyes.