Tower

Nearly fifty years ago, a lone gunman rode the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor of the University of Texas Tower, dragged his footlocker up the stairs to the observation deck, and opened fire. Hundreds of students, professors, tourists, and locals witnessed the 96-minute killing spree as they crouched behind trees, hid under desks, took cover in stairwells, or, if they had been hit, played dead. National networks carried the live feed of the ongoing gun battle, the first live national broadcast of a developing story, complete with the violence and confusion of the day.