Lee Harvey Oswald - Kennedy and Tippit Shootings

Kennedy and Tippit Shootings

According to several government investigations, including the Warren Commission, as Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dallas's Dealey Plaza about 12:30 p.m. on November 22, Oswald fired three rifle shots from the sixth-floor, southeast corner window of the Book Depository, killing the President and seriously wounding Texas Governor John Connally. Bystander James Tague received a minor facial injury. According to the investigations, immediately after firing his last shot, Oswald hid and covered the rifle with boxes and descended using the rear stairwell. About ninety seconds after the shooting, in the second-floor lunchroom, he encountered police officer Marrion Baker accompanied by Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly; Baker let Oswald pass after Truly identified him as an employee. According to Baker, Oswald did not appear to be nervous or out of breath. Mrs. Robert Reid, clerical supervisor at the Depository, returning to her office within two minutes of the assassination, said she saw Oswald who "was very calm" on the second floor with a Coke in his hands. Oswald descended using the front staircase, and left the Depository through the front entrance just before police sealed it off. Oswald's supervisor, Roy Truly, later pointed out to officers that Oswald was the only employee that he was certain was missing.

At about 12:40 p.m., Oswald boarded a city bus but (probably due to heavy traffic) he requested a transfer from the driver and got off two blocks later. He took a taxicab to his rooming house, at 1026 North Beckley Avenue, arriving at about 1:00 p.m. He entered through the front door and, according to his housekeeper Earlene Roberts, immediately went to his room, "walking pretty fast". Roberts said that Oswald left "a very few minutes" later, zipping up a jacket he was not wearing when he had entered earlier, and that she last saw Oswald standing at the northbound Beckley Avenue bus stop in front of the house.

Oswald was next witnessed near the corner of East 10th Street and North Patton Avenue, about nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) southeast of his rooming house—a distance that the Warren Commission said, "Oswald could have easily walked". According to the Warren Commission, it was here that Patrolman J. D. Tippit pulled alongside Oswald and "apparently exchanged words with through the right front or vent window." "Shortly after 1:15 p.m.", Tippit exited his car and was immediately struck and killed by four shots. Numerous witnesses heard the shots and saw a man flee the scene holding a revolver. Four cartridge cases found at the scene were identified by expert witnesses before the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee as having been fired from the revolver later found in Oswald's possession, to the exclusion of all other weapons. The bullets taken from Tippit's body could not be positively identified however as coming from Oswald's revolver.