President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas (Texas) on Nov. 22 by a 24-year-old ex-Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested within a few hours of the killing in Dallas and charged with the murder of President Kennedy and also of a police officer whom he had shot dead before his arrest in a cinema.
Double-click on any word and see its definition from Cambridge Dictionaries Online
Read the article and then do an activity
On the morning of Nov. 24, as he was being taken from the basement of Dallas police headquarters for transference to the county gaol, Oswald was shot dead by a man who pushed his way through the police escort and fired at point-blank range. The killing of Oswald was seen by millions of Americans on television, the time of his removal to the county gaol having been made public in advance and the basement being full of policemen, detectives, reporters, and television cameramen at the time of the shooting. Oswald, who throughout his interrogation had denied killing either President Kennedy or Patrolman Tippit, was being led across the basement between two detectives to a waiting police car when a man pushed his way towards him and shot him in the stomach at a range of a few inches. Oswald collapsed in agony, was rushed to the Parkhall Hospital for an immediate operation, but died soon after admission, in a room only a few feet from that in which President Kennedy died. He was buried at Fort Worth, leaving his Russian-born widow, who speaks no English, and two infant children.
The man who killed Oswald was immediately arrested and identified as Jack Leon Ruby (42), a night-club proprietor whose real name was Rubinstein and who had come to Dallas from Chicago ten years earlier. Ruby was formally charged with the murder of Oswald, bail being refused; the manner in which he had got into the prison yard at the time Oswald was being removed was obscure, but the city manager of Dallas, Mr. Elgin Crull, said there was "good evidence that he got into the area by helping move one of the heavy television cameras." Police officials quoted Ruby as saying that he "did it for Jackie" (Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy) because he wanted to spare the President's widow the agony of attending Oswald's trial. Members of Ruby's family and personal friends described him as a great admirer of President Kennedy and as having been" worked up" by his assassination; his lawyer, Mr. Tom Howard, said that Ruby was "out of his mind" when he shot Oswald and would plead temporary insanity.
Keesings Worldwide Online
| 
