KENNEDY KILLED, CONNALLY WOUNDED

November 22, 2011


48 years ago today President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.


The JFK ASSASSINATION BLOG will remember this day by recounting some of the reports of this tragic event which appeared in the final edition of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, November 22, 1963.


I was 15 years old on that day 48 years ago.  When I arrived home from school, I sat down with my Mom & we watched together the news coverage on our small black & white television.


My Dad worked at the Main Post Office & didn't get home until after 11 p.m.  


Dad brought the copy of the final edition of the Knoxville News-Sentinel which I still have although yellowed after 48 years.*


The Knoxville News-Sentinel
                    FINAL Edition


         Knoxville, TENN, FRIDAY EVENING
                         NOVEMBER 22, 1963


           KENNEDY KILLED,
      CONNALLY WOUNDED
           President Shot in Dallas Parade;
                              LBJ Is New Chief


                                         By MERRIMAN SMITH
                                         UPI White House Reporter


DALLAS, Nov. 22 (UPI)--President Kennedy was assassinated today in a burst of gunfire in downtown Dallas.  Texas Gov. John Connally was shot down with him.

The President, cradled in his wife's arms, had been rushed in his blood-spattered limousine to Parkland Hospital & taken to an emergency room.  An urgent call went out for neurosurgeons & blood.


The President, 46 years old, was shot once in the head.


Connally was hit in the head & wrist.** He was the 4th President to be slain in office.


Police found a foreign-make rifle.  Sheriff's officers were questioning a young man picked up at the scene.***


They believed the fatal shots were fired by a white man about 30, slender of build, weighing about 165 pounds, & standing 5 feet 10 inches tall.


TV newsman Mal Cough said he looked up just after the shot was fired & saw a rifle being withdrawn from a 5th or 6th floor window of a nearby building (the Texas School Book Depository).


Kennedy lived about an hour after the shooting.****


Automatically, the mantle of the Presidency fell to Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, a native Texan who had been riding 2 cars behind the Chief Executive.


Johnson was expected to be sworn in as President aboard an airliner before flying immediately back to the nation's capital.


Mr. Kennedy died at Parkland Hospital, where his bullet-pierced body had been taken in a frantic but futile effort to save his life.


Lying wounded at the same hospital was Gov. Connally who was cut down by the same fusillade that ended the life of the youngest man ever elected to the Presidency.


*Source: The Knoxville News Sentinel, Final Edition, Nov 22, 1963, Knoxville, Tennessee.


**Connally was not shot in the head, but through the back  & chest as well as the wrist.


***The young man was Charles Brehm, a witness.


****JFK was shot at 12:30 p.m. (CST), & pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. (CST)


DALLAS OFFICER & U.S. AGENT KILLED


Dallas, Tex., Nov. 22 (AP)--A Secret Service agent & a Dallas policeman were shot & killed today some distance from the area where President Kennedy was assassinated.*


The Dallas Police department today arrested a 24 year old man, Lee H. Oswald, in connection with the slaying of a Dallas policeman shorter after President Kennedy was assassinated.


He was also being interrogated to see if he had any connection with the slaying of the President.


Oswald was pulled screaming & yelling from the Texas Theater in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.


The officer who was slain, J. D. Tippett**, had been killed by a man answering the description of Oswald in the neighborhood a short time before.  Tippett
had been slain with a pistol.


*The report of a Secret Service Agent being killed proved incorrect.


**Spelled incorrectly, should read J.D. Tippit


Page 2  The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Friday, Nov 22




JFK ASSASSINATED
                                                        Starts on Page One


President Kennedy was shot in the right temple.


"It was a simple matter of a bullet right through the head", said Dr. George Burkley, White House medical officer.


The President's body was carried from the hospital in a wooden casket.


Mrs. Kennedy was accompanying the body. Possibly 50 uniformed policemen surrounded the area, driving back hundreds of spectators surrounding the hospital.


The shooting occurred as the Kennedys were riding through a crowd of 250,000 people in downtown Dallas.


As it neared the triple underpass leading toward the Trade Mart where Kennedy was to address a lunch, 3 bursts of gunfire sounded.


Motorcycle police raced up the grassy knoll of a park nearby where a man & a woman huddled.