Charles Whitman
”It’s not me, but my father went to the University of Texas in the late ’60s and early ’70s. He studied engineering. It turns out his lab partner in physics was Charles Whitman. He said he was nice, quiet, and polite. He said Whitman would keep to himself but that he was very participative when it came to working together. By sheer luck, my dad wasn’t on campus on the day of the shooting, but he suffered the loss of many colleagues that day. He also told me he was shocked when he heard the shooter was Whitman. He always told me I should watch out for the quiet ones. ”
In 1966, Charles Whitman committed one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history when he opened fire from a tower at the University of Texas at Austin, killing 16 people and wounding dozens more. But what’s surprising is that Whitman himself was a decorated Marine and a gifted student who had no previous criminal history. Whitman’s descent into madness was sudden and unexpected, and it’s believed that a brain tumor may have played a role in his violent behavior.