Kennedy
is Dead, Victim of Assassin; Suspect, Arab Immigrant, Arraigned; Johnson
Appoints Panel on Violence
Surgery in Vain
President Calls Death Tragedy, Proclaims a Day of Mourning
Arab Arraigned; $250,000 Bail Set
By GLADWIN HILL
Special to The New York Times – June 5, 1968
Los Angeles,
Thursday, June 6--Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of a murdered
President, died at 1:44 A.M. today of an assassin's shots.
The New York
Senator was wounded more than 20 hours earlier, moments after he had made his
victory statement in the California primary.
At his side when
he died today in Good Samaritan Hospital were his wife Ethel; his sisters, Mrs.
Stephen Smith and Mrs. Patricia Lawford; his bother-in-law, Stephen Smith; and
his sister-in-law, Mrs. John F. Kennedy, whose husband was assassinated 4 1/2
years ago in Dallas.
In Washington,
President Johnson issued a statement calling the death a tragedy. He proclaimed
next Sunday a national day of mourning.
The Final
Report
Hopes had risen
slightly when more than eight hours went by without a new medical bulletin on
the stricken Senator, but the grimness of the final announcement was signaled
when Frank Mankiewicz, Mr. Kennedy's press secretary, walked slowly down the
street in front of the hospital toward the littered gymnasium that served as
press headquarters.
Mr. Mankiewicz bit
his lip. His shoulders slumped.
He stepped to a
lectern in front of a green-tinted chalkboard and bowed his head for a moment
while the television lights snapped on.
Then, at one
minute before 2 A.M., he told of the death of Mr. Kennedy.
Following is the
text of the statement from Mr. Mankiewicz:
"I have a short
announcement to read which I will read at this time. Senator Robert Francis
Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today, June 6, 1968. With Senator Kennedy at the time
of his death was his wife, Ethel; his sisters, Mrs. Patricia Lawford and Mrs.
Stephen Smith, his brother-in-law, Stephen Smith and his sister-in-law, Mrs.
John F. Kennedy.
"He was 42 years
old."
Senator Kennedy's
body will be taken to New York this morning and then to Washington.
The man accused of
shooting Mr. Kennedy early yesterday in a pantry of the Ambassador Hotel was
identified as Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, 24 years old, who was born in Palestinian
Jerusalem of Arab parentage and had lived in the Los Angeles area since 1957.
Sirhan had been a clerk.
$250,000 Bail
Yesterday, he was
hurried through an early-morning court arraignment and held in lieu of $250,000
bail.
Sirhan was charged
with six counts of assault with intent to murder, an offense involving a prison
term of 1 to 14 years.
Five other persons
in addition to the 42-year-old Senator were wounded by the eight bullets from a
.22-caliber revolver fired at almost point-blank range into a throng of
Democratic rally celebrants surging between ballrooms in the hotel. The shots
came moments after Senator Kennedy had made a speech celebrating his victory in
yesterday's Democratic Presidential primary in California.
The defendant,
seized moments after the shooting, refused to give the police any information
about himself. He was arraigned as "John Doe."
Three hours later,
Mayor Samuel W. Yorty announced at a news conference at police headquarters that
the defendant had been identified as Sirhan. He said the identity had been
confirmed by Sirhan's brother and a second individual.
Senator Kennedy,
accompanied by his wife, Ethel, was wheeled into the Good Samaritan Hospital
shortly after 1 A.M. yesterday after a brief stop at the Central Receiving
Hospital. A score of the Senator's campaign aides swarmed around the scene.
Grim Reminder
Less than five
years back many of them had experienced the similar tragedy that ended the life
of President John F. Kennedy.
At 2:22 A.M.,
Senator Kennedy's campaign press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, came out of the
hospital into a throng of hundreds of news people to announce that the Senator
would be taken into surgery "in five or ten minutes" for an operation of "45
minutes or an hour."
One bullet had
gone into the Senator's brain past the mastoid bone back of the right ear, with
some fragments going near the brain stem. Another bullet lodged in the back of
the neck. A third and minor wound was an abrasion on the forehead.
It was after 7
A.M. when Mr. Mankiewicz reported that more than three hours of surgery had been
completed, and all but one fragment of the upper bullet had been removed. The
neck bullet was not removed but "is not regarded as a major problem," Mr.
Mankiewicz said.
He also reported
that the Senator's vital signs remained about as they had been, except that he
was now breathing on his own, which he had not been doing before the surgery.
Then Mr. Mankiewicz said:
"There may have
been an impairment of the blood supply to the mid-brain, which the doctors
explained as governing certain of the vital signs--heart, eye track, level of
consciousness--although not directly the thinking process."
Senator Kennedy
was taken from surgery to an intensive-care unit.
At 2:15 P.M. Mr.
Mankiewicz announced that Senator Kennedy had not regained consciousness and
that a series of medical tests had been "inconclusive and don't show measurable
improvement in Senator Kennedy's condition."
"His condition as
of 1:30 P.M. remains extremely critical," the spokesman continued. "His life
forces--pulse, temperature, blood pressure and heart--remain good, and he
continues to show the ability to breathe on his own, although he is being
assisted by a resuscitator."
The tests included
X-rays and electroencephalograms.
Mrs. Kennedy
remained at the hospital.
Mrs. John F.
Kennedy arrived at the hospital at 7:30 P.M. yesterday, after a chartered plane
flight from New York.
A team of surgeons
treating Senator Kennedy included Dr. James Poppen, head of neurosurgery at the
Lahey Clinic in Boston. He was rushed to Los Angeles in an Air Force plane on
instructions from Vice President Humphrey.
Mr. Humphrey and
Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota have been Senator Kennedy's rivals in
the Democratic Presidential competition.
Mayor Yorty said
the defendant's identification had come through a brother, Adel Sirhan, after
the police had traced the ownership of the .22-caliber revolver involved in the
shooting to a third brother, Munir Bishari Salameh Sirhan, also known as Joe
Sirhan.
The weapon was
traced through three owners, one in suburban Alabama, the next in Marin County,
adjacent to San Francisco, and back to an 18-year-old youth in suburban
Pasadena. The youth said he had sold it to "a bushy-haired guy named Joe" whom
he knew only as an employee of a Pasadena department store.
Detectives
identified the bushy haired man as Munir Sirhan. From him, the trail led to the
two other brothers, who have been living together in Pasadena.
The snubnosed
.22-caliber Iver Johnson Cadet model revolver seized after the shooting was
described as having been picked out of a list of 2.5 million weapons registered
in California in "just seconds" after the disclosure of its serial number. This
was done by a new computer used by the State Bureau of Criminal Investigation
and Identification in Sacramento, according to State Attorney General Thomas
Lynch.
The defendant was
arraigned at 7 A.M., unusually early, before Municipal Judge Joan Dempsey Klein
on a complaint issued by District Attorney Evelle Younger after all-night
consultation with the police.
Deputy District
Attorney William Ritzi said the case would be presented to the county grand jury
on Friday.
The other victims
of the shooting were Paul Schrade, 43 years old, a regional director of the
United Automobile and Aerospace Workers Union, a prominent Kennedy campaigner;
William Weisel, 30, a unit manager for the American Broadcasting Company; Ira
Goldstein, 19, an employee of Continental New Service at nearby Sherman Oaks;
Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, 43, of Sangus, in Los Angeles County, and Irwin Stroll,
17.
Mr. Schrade, the
most seriously wounded of the five, underwent an apparently successful operation
at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital today to remove a bullet from his skull.
Mr. Weisel was
reported in good condition after removal of a bullet from his abdomen.
The court
complaint against Sirhan charged that "on or about the fifth day of June, 1968,
at and in the county of Los Angeles a felony was committed by John Doe, who at
the time and place aforesaid, did willfully, unlawfully and feloniously commit
an assault with a deadly weapon upon Robert Francis Kennedy, a human being, with
the intent then and there willfully, unlawfully, feloniously and with malice
aforethought to kill and murder the said Robert Francis Kennedy."
Sirhan was
represented at the arraignment by the chief public defender, Richard S. Buckley.
He asked Mr. Buckley to get in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union
about getting private counsel for him.
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