Local Resident Remembers Tower Shooting

I first wrote this in 2016 and my husband has since passed away, however he would talk about that day with such sadness.

“Thought we were at war” is what Gene Adcox believed on that very hot sultry day 55 years ago in Austin on Aug. 1, 1966. It was a normal workday at the A&P Grocery, as he was a manager trainee and a very young 22 years old. Adcox left for lunch and planned to pay his electric and water bill at the Coop, which at the time was across the street from the University of Texas tower. “All hell broke loose, glass breaking, people screaming get down get down,” he remembers. The first officer I saw running towards the tower was Austin Police Officer Billy Speed, I knew him as a customer when I worked for Town and Country food store on Riverside Drive and he had written two warning tickets for my speeding. I learned Speed later had been shot and killed.

“The 96 minutes of terror and fear seemed much longer. I had laid on the ground and watched as many folks were getting shotguns from their pickups as well as going to apartments and homes and coming back hoping to fire back. Eventually it was over, the girl that had been lying on the ground close by was in shock, “hell I was scared to death,” says Adcox. “Everyone was just in fear. I managed to locate my wife and mother to let them know I was OK.”

“I grew up on West 31 ½ Street and could see the tower from home. Although it was 55 years ago, I remember it as if it were yesterday.”