Jess Preciphs was 18 years old during the UT Tower shooting. He had just graduated from Austin High School and started college courses that summer to get ahead.
“It was an exciting campus to be on because there was such a richness of culture, so many opportunities to be exposed to and learn new things,” Preciphs says.
Preciphs was on the drag when the shooting started. He had just gotten out of lunch at El Toro restaurant and was on his way to a lab with a group of incoming freshmen. He went to fetch an abandoned bicycle out of the street on Guadalupe when he realized it was covered with blood.
Nuns at a nearby Catholic church yelled to him “‘Get under cover, get under cover!’” Preciphs says.
He and his friends hid under the large trees that border the edge of campus along Guadalupe Street.