Due to the midday August heat, Bayless had originally thought the young man was having a heat stroke, as they were common at this time. “I just kind of turned around to look towards The Drag because that’s where the cars were.”īayless explained that as he was looking, out of the corner of his eye he saw Eckman grabbing his head and bending forward, while Wilson was pulled down under his weight. They were kind of right in the middle of the mall, and I was down closer to where I was headed, and the tower was behind me,” Bayless explained.Īt first, he thought it was a car backfiring on the street next to him known as The Drag. “I got probably, I don’t know, 20 yards away from them. While walking across the Main Mall, a commons area in the middle of the campus, he happened to pass a couple, Claire Wilson and Thomas Eckman. Just before noon, Bayless was headed to his next location. Little did Bayless know the day would be memorable in more ways than one.Ĭharles Whitman, after murdering both his wife and his mother earlier that morning, climbed to the top of the clock tower at the university and began aimlessly firing shots at random civilians. David Bayless Jr., an incoming freshman studying dentistry at the University of Texas at Austin at the time, was preparing for freshman orientation with his itinerary in hand. 1, 1966 was supposed to be a normal morning.

Cannella, who taught journalism at Central Connecticut State University, lives in the Ivoryton section of Essex.The morning of Aug. Who in 1966 could have imagined his twisted undertaking as anything but a horror one and done?Īnthony R. Clearly, architectural-engineering student Charles Whitman sketched a rough draft of so much madness to be. Yet, weaponry - from controversial firearms to nuclear submarines and fighter-jet engines - is a salient part of the state’s economy.Īfter 50 years of Whitmanesque bloodletting, America is in deadlock over guns. We have the moral leverage earned - at horrific cost - by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 2012. Our congressional delegation spearheads gun-control efforts. Yes, we have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. 1 exalts not the memory of the victims but the “good guy with a gun” approach to dealing with formidably armed assassins.Įven as I throw stones at gun-crazy Texas, I dwell in a glass house called Connecticut. The new law allows concealed handguns in classrooms and faculty offices. Why did it latch onto the first day of August this year to usher in a controversial “campus carry” gun law passed last year over protests by faculty members, students and dissenting lawmakers? Now, five decades after Whitman’s seminal slaughter, I marvel at the tone-deafness of the Texas legislature. Within two hours of his first shot, two extremely brave Austin police officers confronted him on his perch and killed him. But his time in the sun was shorter than he’d hoped. He had equipped himself with canned peaches, deodorant, sweet rolls and an alarm clock. Īpparently, Whitman had delusions of staying power. Another person shot by Whitman died in 2001 and that was ruled to have been from his wounds. Two other Peace Corps colleagues, David Mattson and Roland “Cap” Ehlke, were severely wounded. Behind it, I found Barbara, a fellow Peace Corps trainee, whose last name escapes me after so many years. Scared and looking for better cover, I scurried toward a brick building. I dove beneath the silver wing of a vintage fighter jet on display near where I had been walking. It was reportedly the first mass shooting on an American college campus, a story that sadly has been repeated many times since Whitman opened fire in 1966. Whitman, 25, had a commanding view of the lush campus with its Spanish-style mansions, splotches of distinctive Longhorns orange and tempting streams of pedestrians. I realized that shots were coming from the clock tower and I was well within range.įrom his sniper’s perch, grad student Charles J.

As I walked across campus under the midday sun, I was startled by several thumping blasts. 1, I was headed for lunch after a Persian language class at the University of Texas in Austin.

Bell tower shooting