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Originally Posted by Gillianren
... is that the majority of those students weren't picking a fight.
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Unfortunately, there were some that weren't, and all it takes is a few bad apples to spoil the bunch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gillianren
You have to remember that the photos of the time show that the nearest students were out of throwing range and therefore were no danger to the National Guardsmen.
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That changed during the events of the day, sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gillianren
In fact, by all accounts, the National Guardsmen were moving away, had gone nearly over a ridge and out of sight, and turned and fired.
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Not exactly. They realized they left the students boxed into a fenced area, and retreated enough to give them an egress. They did stop for some time (although short) before firing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gillianren
This isn't a riot. But no one knows exactly why those students died.
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This is the key point to the whole ordeal. Given all the factors in the tragedy, I don't think there was any one thing that could be considered a "spark". It was an escalation of events over the course of over 3 days. Guard, police, fire, and students all were injured during the ordeal.
Downtown was left in shambles.
A building was burned down.
Damage and injuries occured at the dorms the day before.
The guard was coming of a previous assignment.
This all boils down to the word tragedy.
I do know some people who were there at the time. They were the smart ones who got away from there. There were innocent students shot that were not part of the rally, there were some that were.
The situation occured in an area of many dorms, so there were students that were pretty much trapped in the area.
Most of the guard did not shoot. Of those that did, a portion tried to shoot away from the students (in the ground, over thier heads, etc). One student that was hit was about 120 degrees from the angle of the shots.
And this is evidenced by various bullet holes in various parts of the campus.
As to this tape, it was probably done at prentice hall which is where the majority of the shot/injured were. The direction the windows in that building face were directly toward the crowd. I think that any voices heard on the tape were that of the students. If anything is on the tape, my guess would be a student saying something to the effect of "yea, go ahead and point at me, shoot me..."