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DON'T SHOOT! DON'T SHOOT! It's me!


Tony Krome

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I'm reading the Fireman's account of being called in to the TSBD at 1pm on the 22nd

Warnock says he and Coombs were asked set up floodlights in a "cockloft" above the 7th floor because the agents told him they suspected the assassin may be hiding up there.

file.php?id=299259

They set it up, and the deal was to have the switch flipped on the floodlights as armed agents entered the cockloft

Now, you can imagine as this point, there has been a plan of action and communication with everyone involved in the "cockloft raid"

So the firemen follow four agents with submachine guns into the cockloft and the floodlights are switched on

But unknown to the raiders, there's someone already up there who screams out, DON'T SHOOT! DON'T SHOOT! It's me!

Warnock and Coombs panic and slide back down the stairs

Interesting to note that between 1:02pm when Warnock arrived and by the time they had the cockloft raid set up, the authorities still suspected the assassin may be in the building, yet they weren't interested in evacuating employees.

Another thing raised by Warnock is that the lightbulbs around the Sniper's Nest were all unscrewed

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth532627/m1/1/

 

 

 

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The photo below shows how high the ceiling was on the 7th floor. 

I'd like to know the extent of the cockloft, according to Warnock, the guy who yelled don't shoot was at "the other end of the building", yet the structure seen in the above photo seems quite small. 

Could there have been a false ceiling or raised roof that formed a cockloft that spanned the building?

This from a Fire Engineering site;

A reader asked the difference between a cockloft and an attic.A cockloft is a small space created when the roof is raised above the level of the flat beams to provide a pitch to drain rain and a vented air space to reduce top-floor temperatures. This is called an “inverted roof.” 

This would make sense if they needed floodlights

TSBD-23.png

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It appears that Baker and Truly went up the same cockloft stairs that agents asked Warnock to access;

Mr. BELIN. What did you do when you got to the seventh floor? 
Mr. TRULY. We ran up a little stairway that leads out through a little penthouse on to the roof. 
Mr. BELIN. What did you do on the roof? 
Mr. TRULY. We ran immediately to the west side of the building. There is a wall around the building that you cannot see over without getting your foot between the mortar of the stones and, or some such toehold. We did that and looked over the ground and the railroad tracks below. There we saw many officers and a lot of spectators, people running up and down. 

The "little penthouse" may be that structure the man is looking into in the photo a few posts above

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Since the main stairs were blocked off, Truly and Baker accessed the roof via the cockloft stairs

This may indicate that everything above the blocked stairs and below the triangular structure on top, may not have been searched

 

file.php?id=299261&mode=view

Edited by Tony Krome
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5 minutes ago, Ian Lloyd said:

Who was up there?

Warnock goes on to say that it was another agent on the same floor, that was oblivious to all the preparations, who found a ladder, climbed up to a manhole in the ceiling at the other end of the building, at exaclty the same time as the cockloft raid team entered.

The 22nd sure was a crazy day

Anyway, I'm putting together all the info I can find in order to make sense of the claim and to learn more about the layout of the building.

 

 

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Yes, I read through that while researching possible escape routes in relation to another thread. I'd like to focus on Warnock's recollections and I believe their is a Sixth Floor interview with him that I haven't seen yet, so if anyone can link it up it would be appreciated

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It looks like JARMAN, WILLIAMS & NORMAN could have arrived on the first floor well after 1pm

Mr. BALL. When you got to the first floor, what did you see? 
Mr. WILLIAMS. When we arrived to the first floor, the first thing I noticed was that the policemen had rushed in. I think some firemen came in
 

Warnock says the call came in at 1:02pm, then after he arrived at the TSBD, they went up to the 7th floor

Thats if Williams is recalling seeing the firemen in the context of how Ball phrased the question, which maybe accurate as Williams did say "first thing I noticed"

Edited by Tony Krome
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