Booth

Today marks the 57th anniversary of one of the darkest days in Texas history: the attack by Charles Whitman on innocent people from the main building at the University of Texas. The death toll, including Whitman’s wife and mother, was a total of seventeen: fifteen (including Austin police officer Billy Speed) died on August 1, another died on August 8, and a final victim died of a gunshot-related wound in 2001. Thirty-one individuals were treated for wounds, ranging from superficial to life-threatening, in Austin’s hospitals and the University Student Health Center. This photo, taken the day after the massacre, shows the four men who braved Whitman's sniper fire to bring him down. They are, from left, Allen Crum, university co-op employee, and Austin policemen Ramiro Martinez, Houston McCoy and Jerry Day. There has been some uncertainty over whether it was Martinez or McCoy who fired the shots that killed Whitman, but it is now believed that it was Officer McCoy. It doesn't matter, however. Each of these men is a hero because they went toward the tower and after Whitman even though they knew what they were facing. Allen Crum died in Nevada in 2001. Officer McCoy died in 2012. Officer Day has also died but I can't determine when. Officer Martinez is the last of the four who is still alive. I have so much respect for each of these men.