An American tragedy: The shots that rang out around the world
It was the headline news that shocked the world.
Fifty-seven years ago, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was shot while riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas.
He died in the emergency room of the Parkland Memorial Hospital half an hour later, the third United States president to be assassinated while in office following Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and William Mckinley in 1901.
However, this was the first killing of a world figure in the age of television, and every station around the globe took up the story.
The president had been nearing the end of a two-day tour of Texas, and was heading to make a luncheon speech at Dallas Trade Mart.
Alongside First Lady Jackie Kennedy, he had received a rapturous welcome from crowds at the airport. Amid cheers and pleas for handshakes, Mrs Kennedy took the lead and walked from the ramp of the presidential plane to the fence that held the crowd in.
She was followed quickly by the president and the couple worked the crowd together, seizing hands and forearms of supporters, smiling broadly.
The Secret Service and the police were relieved to get them into their car, where Mrs Kennedy sat alongside the president, behind John B Connally, the governor of Texas. Dallas police had taken the most stringent security precautions in the city’s history as they were desperate to avoid a repeat of the attack on Adlai Stevenson, US Ambassador to the United Nations, during a rally just weeks previously.
The motorcade was slowly making its way, about a mile from the destination, when three muffled shots which the crowd at first mistook for fireworks cracked through the cheers.
One hit the shoulder and wrist of Governor Connally. Another hit the president in the head. His right arm flopped from a high wave of greeting and he collapsed into the arms of Mrs Kennedy, who was heard to cry: “Oh no!”
The President was rushed to the emergency room of Parkland Hospital, while Governor Connally was taken into surgery.
Less than an hour later, after two priests had administered last rites, the president was officially declared dead. His body was escorted by Generals Chester Victor Clifton Jr and Godfrey Mchugh, the president’s chief military and air force aides, to Dallas Airport and flown back to Washington.
Within an hour of the commander-in-chief’s death, the Secret Service had found a sniper’s nest inside the building from which witnesses said the bullets had been fired. It was a
warehouse for a school textbook firm, known as Texas School Depository, on the corner of Elm and Houston Streets.
Forty-five minutes after Kennedy’s death, a former US Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot and killed a Dallas policeman, JD Tippit, then dashed into a movie theatre, where he hid but was soon captured.
Oswald was charged with the murder of officer Tippit and also of President Kennedy.
Two days after the assassination, as Oswald was being moved to the city jail, Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, shot and killed the suspect in the basement of police headquarters.
A later investigation concluded that Kennedy’s assassination was carried out solely by Oswald.