AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Aug. 1 marks 60 years since the tragic shooting at the University of Texas at Austin\u2019s famous tower. Fifteen people were killed and more than 30 were injured, making it one of the deadliest mass shootings in America at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all looked at this tower with pride,\u201d said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who was a UT student at the time of the shooting. \u201cAnd yet, this time, it became a tower of tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
That day in 1966 is a dark part of Austin\u2019s history. The mass shooting took place from the observation deck of the tower.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole event was such a shock,\u201d Doggett said.<\/p>\n
The Democratic congressman remembers where he stood that fateful day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was at the old business school across the street on Speedway from Gregory Gymnasium,\u201d Doggett said.<\/p>\n
He had parked at a different location from his usual spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad I not gone the way I went, I would have been right in the thick of this,\u201d Doggett said.<\/p>\n
As he walked to his car, he heard unusual noises but didn\u2019t know the sound was caused by gunfire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo sooner had I reached home, that I began to hear the broadcast over the noon news of what happened,\u201d Doggett said.<\/p>\n
Decades later, it remains one of the worst mass shootings in American history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had not had anything of this magnitude in Texas or really in the country as a whole,\u201d Doggett said.<\/p>\n
Because of how uncommon these kinds of incidents were back then, some students like Forrest Preece didn\u2019t take heed to a warning about the shooter. He was almost hit by a bullet when he stepped outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe concept that there\u2019d be somebody on top of the tower, shooting down at innocent people wandering around, that just didn’t compute,\u201d Preece said.<\/p>\n
Doggett connected how rare mass shootings were at that time to a modern-day era of violence that still affects Americans 60 years later.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe broader problem of an amazing 273 mass shootings in America over this year indicates our significant need for gun safety legislation, which sadly, seems to be blocked in Congress and in the Texas Legislature,\u201d Doggett said.<\/p>\n
While the UT Tower undergoes renovations and modernization that has covered some of the bullet holes left behind, the names of those 15 who died remain inscribed on a memorial at the Tower Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe it’s important to view it as a sacred place, honoring those who were lost and those who acted with such courage,\u201d Doggett said.<\/p>\n
And now, 60 years since that tragic day, the congressman believes it\u2019s as important as ever to find ways to prevent these kinds of tragedies from continuing to be the norm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Aug. 1 marks 60 years since the tragic shooting at the University of Texas at Austin\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3564,2160,132,134,133,3565,6364,66,223,27,1569,131402,2053,835],"class_list":["post-395274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-community","tag-app-top-stories","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-community-news","tag-geraldine-torrellas","tag-local","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-today-in-history","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}