10/23/2023 0 Comments Charles whitman shooter“I felt like this was therapy for me, not to keep it bottled up.” “The reason I got the publicity a lot of the time was I was willing to speak to the media,” Martinez said. It’s all there - all the evidence of the day that came to define his entire life. He pointed to a grainy photograph of himself, taken minutes after the killing ended, his uniform stained with the blood of victims he helped. In his home office in New Braunfels, an hour’s drive south of Austin, 79-year-old Martinez pored over the old newspaper clippings, the transcripts of the emergency calls, the autopsy report of the shooter. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times ) At the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum in Waco, a display case features his revolver.Īustin needed a hero, and Martinez embraced the role. 1 “Ramiro Martinez Day.” The county later named a building for him. “I had a job to do and that’s what I was going out there to do,” Martinez told reporters as camera flashbulbs went off around him. The next thing that is known for sure is that Martinez left the tower first, yelling, “I got him!”Īt a news conference the next day, Police Chief Robert Miles credited Martinez with shooting Whitman, calling him “the hero of the day.” When the two men rounded the corner together, Whitman came into view. Carrying a shotgun, he had entered the tower through a maintenance tunnel and made his way to the top. McCoy, a 26-year-old patrolman who had been on the force three years, had been working his beat near campus when a dispatcher called him to the scene. Then he forced open the door that Whitman had barricaded with his dolly.Īs he rounded the tower, he looked back and saw a familiar face: Houston McCoy. On the metal stairs leading to the observation deck, he stopped briefly to help a woman who was bleeding badly and struggling to breathe. He was off duty when he heard on the noon news that a shooting was in progress, and rushed to the scene with his. Ramiro Martinez was a 29-year-old sergeant and had been on the force for six years. ![]() ![]() The death toll would surely have been higher had it not been for two police officers.
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