(4 of 6)
"Wasn't It Terrible?" Just after the presidential car sped off, Warehouse Superintendent Roy S. Truly, who had just stepped outside his building into the sideline crush of well wishers on Elm Street, saw a motorcycle cop running through the crowd, knocking people out of the way as he made for the door of the warehouse. Truly joined him, led him to the elevator. An upstairs elevator gate was open, immobilizing the whole system. Truly bounded up a staircase with the cop behind him, his revolver drawn. Off the second-floor landing the cop saw a lunch room. He ran inside, saw a man standing next to a Coke machine. It was Lee Harvey Oswald. The cop asked Truly: "This boy work here?" Truly said yes. At that the officer wheeled and ran up the steps, somehow convinced that any sniper in the building must be a stranger and not an employee.
Carrying his Coke, Oswald ambled into a nearby office. A switchboard operator said, "Wasn't that terrible—the President being shot?" Oswald mumbled something unintelligible, went out of the office, walked down the steps and slipped through the crowd outside. He walked for several blocks, doubled back to Elm Street, approached a bus, rapped on the door and was admitted by the driver even though it was not a regular stop. The bus soon got snarled in a traffic jam caused by the excitement of the assassination. A motorist who was stalled in front of the bus got out and went back to tell the driver about the murder. Oswald got up and said to the driver, "Give me a transfer." The driver punched the transfer slip. Oswald took it and got out.
The Arrest. It was now about 12:45. Oswald walked a few blocks and hailed a cab. He told the driver to take him to the 500 block on North Beckley—five blocks beyond his rooming house. The fare was 950, and Oswald added a nickel tip. He went to his room, quickly changed his coat for a windbreaker and left, taking with him a .38-caliber revolver. He stood momentarily at a corner bus stop, then turned, walked swiftly down the street and turned into East 10th Street. Patrolman J. D. Tippit, cruising alone in Dallas police squad car 10, drove by. He had already received an all-points bulletin about a man answering Oswald's description; back at the warehouse, after police had assembled all the employees, Superintendent Truly had noticed Oswald's absence. Oswald was now wanted for questioning.
Tippit stopped Oswald, got out of his car to question him. Oswald pulled his revolver, shot three times, and Tippit fell dead. Passersby saw Oswald run into a vacant lot, discard his jacket and empty three spent shells from the revolver. The manager of a shoe store saw Oswald leap into the entrance way of the store as a police car, its siren wailing, shot past. Catching his breath, Oswald ran up the street and entered a movie house. The shoe store manager alerted the theater staff. By 1:45 cops had converged on the theater, walked inside, ordered the lights up. They found Oswald and overpowered him after he misfired in an attempt to shoot one of the officers. He was dragged fighting into a car and hustled to police headquarters, where only 45 hours later, he himself was murdered.