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"Governor Connally testified that he recognized the first noise as a rifle shot, and the thought immediately crossed his mind that it was an assassination attempt. From his position in the right jump seat immediately in front of the President, he instinctively turned to his right because the shot appeared to come from over his right shoulder. Unable to see the President as he turned, the Governor started to look back over his left shoulder, but he never completed the turn because he felt something strike him in the back.
"Mrs. Connally, too, heard a frightening noise from her right. Looking back over her right shoulder, she saw that the President had both hands at his neck. She watched as he slumped down with an empty expression on his face. [Secret Service Agent] Roy Kellerman, in the right front seat of the limousine, heard a report like a firecracker. Turning to his right in the direction of the noise, Kellerman heard the President say, 'My God, I am hit.'
"Mrs. Connally heard a second shot fired and pulled her husband down into her lap. Observing his blood-covered chest as he was pulled into his wife's lap, Governor Connally believed himself mortally wounded. He cried out: 'Oh, no, no, no. My God, they are going to kill us all.' At first Mrs. Connally thought that her husband had been killed, but then she noticed an almost imperceptible movement and knew that he was still alive. She said, 'It's all right. Be still.' The Governor was lying with his head on his wife's lap when he heard a shot hit the President. At that point, both Governor and Mrs. Connally observed brain tissue splattered over the interior of the car."
All evidence is that three shots were fired, but there is disagreement about which ones hit whom. Connally believes that the first one struck Kennedy in the neck, that Connally was hit by the second, that the third caused the massive wound in the President's head.
But the Commission presents evidence that one shot went wild and two hit—with the one that pierced the President's throat continuing on to hit Connally.
"Get Down!" Two cars to the rear, in the Lincoln carrying the Lyndon Johnsons and Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, Secret Service Man Rufus W. Youngblood heard "an explosive noise." He wheeled around from the front seat, hit Johnson on the shoulder and yelled, "Get down!" Reported Johnson: "Almost in the same moment in which Youngblood hit or pushed me, he vaulted over the back seat and sat on me. I was bent over under the weight of Agent Youngblood's body, toward Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough."
In the second car behind Johnson, Mrs. Earle Cabell, wife of the mayor of Dallas, saw a "projection" sticking out of a window of the School Book Depository building. From