 | | He could see me when I was behind the flagpole. He kept trying to get my attention to come help him, but there was absolutely no way I could have done that. And he kept moving. I told him: "Just keep still."
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Still, large numbers of people in the area failed to recognize the danger. Many did not know what rifle fire sounded like; to them it was just a series of strange noises. Others, like a student named William "Bill" Helmer, who knew gunfire when they heard it, and even saw the gun barrel, thought "some fool was going to get himself into a lot of trouble." Still others saw bodies lying on the pavement and in the grass. They saw Charlotte desperately hugging a flagpole and wondered what could possibly be going on. It had to be some kind of stunt, a frat prank, or maybe the drama department had sent out a bunch of flaky actors to do weird thingswho knows? There was not a whole lot that could surprise a seasoned Austiniteexcept mass murder. But the bodies kept falling, the blood was real, and the man on the deck, a consummate actor for a number of years, was no longer acting.
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Only about seven minutes earlier Don Walden and Cheryl Botts had stepped off the elevator onto the first floor of the Tower. They had been on the deck and spoken to Charles Whitman. After reaching the first floor, they went to the registrar's office and completed forms for Don to receive a registration packet. Then they walked down the hallway of the Main Building, exited through the west doorway, crossed a driveway, and entered the Academic Center which formed a portion of the northern border of the West Mall. They noticed that flags strung up the tall stainless steel poles on the South Mall were waving at half mast, and they turned east to see if a notice at one of the flagpoles might explain why. When they reached the southwest corner of the Main Building, Cheryl stopped in mid-sentence when a strange noise rang out and a man fell to the ground. The noises were not strange to Don; he knew gunfire when he heard it. Don started to run to the man as Charlotte Darenshori fled to the safety of the base of the flagpole, then he grabbed Cheryl's hand and ran quickly into the history building. Once safely inside, Don asked someone to call the police. A woman said she already had.
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