DALLAS (AP) – The memorial to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a closed crime scene to the usual hordes of weekend tourists Saturday.
Once again, Dallas is the seat of national grief.
Police cruisers with flashing lights cordoned off 20 square downtown blocks where an Army reservist this week carried out the deadliest assault on U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, while onlookers outside the barricades mourned five slain officers in a city long tormented by another singular violent event.
The ambush Thursday night during a protest march over recent police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota shook even Dallas residents most inexorably tied to Kennedy’s death.
Among them was Marie Tippit, the 87-year-old widow of the Dallas police officer who Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed after killing Kennedy. She said Saturday she stayed up watching coverage of this week’s bloodshed until the “wee hours.”