AUSTIN, Texas — It wasn’t typical programming on Austin’s educational television station on the morning of Aug. 1, 1966. As a live TV camera trained its sight on the familiar University of Texas Tower, occasional puffs of smoke from gunfire could be seen as the stern voice of an announcer on campus TV station KLRN (now local PBS station KLRU) warned viewers to keep away from the UT campus.
“Stay away from the campus,” the announcer said. “A man with a rifle is firing on people below the tower.”
It was believed to have been the first time viewers saw a live broadcast of a sniper committing mass murder.
From 230 feet above the ground, a former U.S. Marine and current UT architecture student, Charles Whitman, was firing at people along the Guadalupe Street “Drag” and on the campus grounds.
He had loaded a foot locker with weapons and ammunition, disguised himself as a janitor, and made his way up an elevator to the observation deck of the tower.
From his perch, Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 32 before two Austin police officers made their way up the tower and shot and killed him.
Local newspaper columnist Forrest Preece was a young journalism student who was between summer classes that day when a bullet whizzed past his head and struck the person standing next to him, killing him.
“I suppose you’d say I have some survivor’s guilt,” Preece said. “The man next to me was married and the father of six children and lost his life while I managed to survive.”
Preece says it appeared at the time that Whitman was seeking out people at random as he moved his gun site from left to right.
Whitman had been seeking professional help for persistent headaches and violent fantasies prior to the shooting spree. An autopsy determined that he had a brain tumor, but there has been debate over the years as to whether that’s what triggered his violent outburst that hot summer day in Austin.
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