Acquilla
Clemons lived on the north side of Tenth Street in Dallas. On
22nd November, 1963, Clemons was sitting on the porch of her house
when she saw Officer J.
D. Tippit killed.
Afterwards she claimed
that there were two men involved in the attack on Tippit. She later
testified that the gunman was a "short guy and kind of heavy".
The other man was tall and thin in khaki trousers and a white shirt.
The Dallas Police warned her not to repeat this story to others or
"she might get hurt". Clemons was not called to give evidence
to the Warren
Commission.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Anthony
Summers,
The Kennedy Conspiracy (1980)
Mrs. Acquilla
Clemons, who was in a house close to the spot where Tippit was killed,
told independent investigators she saw two men near the policeman's
car just before the shooting. She said she ran out after the shots
and saw a man with a gun. But she described him as "kind of chunky...
kind of heavy," a description which does not fit Oswald at all.
Much more disturbing, this was not the only man she saw...
Mrs. Clemons
said the man with a gun went off in one direction and the
second man in another. She described the man with the gun as "short
and kind of heavy"
and wearing "khaki and a white shirt" - a description which
does not fit Oswald at all. The second man, she said, was thin and
tall rather than short, a description which could refer to Oswald.
Obviously,
Mrs. Clemons should have been questioned more thoroughly than
in a television interview. She said she had been visited by the FBI,
who decided not to
take a statement because of her poor health. Mrs. Clemons suffered
from diabetes, hardly a condition to deter efficient investigators
from taking a statement. According to two reporters, who visited
Mrs. Clemons several years after the assassination, she and her family
still spoke with conviction of seeing two men at the scene of the
Tippit shooting.
Mrs. Clemons' story finds corroboration from another witness,
and he too was ignored.
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