University of Texas Tower Shooting
| University of Texas Tower Shooting | |
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Main building of the University of Texas
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| Location | University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, U.S. |
| Date | August 1, 1966 Stabbing: c. 12:15 a.m. – 3:00 a.m. Shooting: 11:48 a.m. – 1:24 p.m. (UTC-06:00) |
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Attack type
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School shooting, mass shooting, familicide, matricide, uxoricide, mass murder, stabbing |
| Weapons |
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| Deaths | 18 (including Whitman, unborn child) |
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Non-fatal injuries
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31 |
| Perpetrator | Charles Whitman |
On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, a former Marine sharpshooter, took rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main Building tower at The University of Texas at Austin, then opened fire on persons indiscriminately on the surrounding campus and streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed fifteen people including one unborn child and injured thirty-one others; another victim died in hospital and the final victim died from the lingering effects of his wounds in 2001, and his death was ruled a homicide. The incident ended when police reached Whitman and shot him dead.
Before going to the campus Whitman had killed his mother and wife. It has been suggested that his violent impulses, with which he had been struggling for years, were due to a small tumor found in his brain on autopsy.
Charles Whitman, 25, was studying architectural engineering. Whitman was extremely intelligent; at the age of six, he scored 139 on an IQ test. At twelve years old he became the youngest person to become an Eagle Scout. He joined the Marines after high school, and earned a Sharpshooter’s Badge, Good Conduct medal, and Marine Corps Expedition medal.
In 1961 he was admitted to the University of Texas at Austin on a scholarship from the Naval Enlisted Science Education Program. While at UT, Whitman met and married his wife, Kathleen. Whitman struggled with gambling and bad grades, and he lost his scholarship in 1963. Before the attack, Whitman had sought professional help for "overwhelming violent impulses" including fantasies about shooting people from the tower. A small brain tumor found after his death may or may not have been the cause of these impulses.
Whitman killed his mother, Margaret Whitman, and his wife, Kathleen Leissner Whitman, between midnight and 3:00 a.m. on August 1. In a note he professed his love for both women, saying he had killed them to spare them future humiliation.
Later that morning, Whitman rented a hand truck and cashed $250 (equivalent to $1,800 in 2016) worth of bad checks at a bank. He then drove to a hardware store, where he purchased a Universal M1 carbine, two additional ammunition magazines and eight boxes of ammunition, telling the cashier he planned to hunt wild hogs. At a gun shop he purchased four further carbine magazines, six additional boxes of ammunition, and a can of gun cleaning solvent, and at Sears he purchased a Sears Model 60 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun before returning home.
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Wikipedia