Forrest Preece was a student at UT-Austin in the summer of 1966. On August 1 of that year, he remembers being at a drug store on Guadalupe Street, “the Drag,” when the Tower shooting was underway. He says there was no indication earlier that day that anything was out of the ordinary.
“Something very evil was happening while I was just going about being a typical all-American 20-year-old kid going to class,” Preece says.
Looking up Guadalupe Street from outside the drug store, he and his friends tried to make sense of the commotion in the street and the cracking sounds in the air.
A bullet whizzed past Preece and ended up killing a 38-year-old Ph.D. student.
“It was just that much of a fine line,” Preece says.