RFK shot dead; America plunged in grief

Los Angeles: Senator Robert F. Kennedy, felled like his brother by an assassin’s bullet, died early today.

He never regained consciousness after the savage burst of revolver fire cut him down at the Ambassador Hotel, at the pinnacle of his own campaign for the White House.

A Roman Catholic priest was with the Senator when he died at 14- 14 IST little more than 24 hours after the assault.

Los Angeles police arrested a man named Sirhan Bishara Sirhan and charged him with the assault.

Frank ManKiewicz, Kennedy’s press secretary, announced the death of the Senator at 12- 30 IST.

The haggard aid was asked for the specific cause of the death of the 42- yearold New York Senator. He looked up numbly.

“The gunfire attack,” he said. ManKiewicz said the fatal shot was “the bullet that went into the head near the right ear.” That slug entered Kennedy’s brain, and surgeons conducted a three- hour 40minute operation early yesterday to remove all but a fragment.

But the Senator never rallied. “I was not a question of his sinking,” ManKiewicz said “but of not rising. He needed a rally and steady improvement in his condition and that did not develop.”

Mankiewicz said Kennedy’s wife, Ethel, his brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and a Roman Catholic priest were with the Senator when he died.